This one started as an idea for a longer story, but the team was so good they solved the case before it went too far. It wrapped up just in time for Christmas.
Marianne
Chapter 1
Everything was quiet in the CID office in Aston. Most of the team being out on various cases. Acting Detective Sergeant Sally Brown was busy finalising the file of a robbery case. It hadn’t been a long investigation, as the criminals had tried to sell off the loot, taken from a country house, on the internet. Sally shook her head. Anybody could see that a Queen Anne chair was a bit different from a ‘fifties designer chair, ideal for an older dwelling’. You only had to watch television to know those sorts of things. That one had taken Ben and Charlie just two days to track down and find the lock-up with the rest of the haul.
After the suicides case, though, she no longer wondered at the idiocy that some of the criminals exhibited. That one had been planned with care, along with many others, but was sunk by a simple act of stupidity. As she worked, a police courier came in with some files.
“Sally, there isn’t much in this lot to need your skills, just some more robberies and one that looks like a natural death, although a relative has screamed that the victim was perfectly healthy.”
“Since when have you started sifting through the files? You shouldn’t do that, you know. Too much of that sort of thing and you’ll be asking for a transfer to CID, and then you’ll have to work!”
“I know, Sally, but I look at you and I know that it wasn’t that long ago that you were a simple WPC.”
“Watch it, Alf! I may have been a WPC, but enough with the simple comments. I’ll have you know that I have a complex character.”
“I’ll agree with the complex, Sally. Anyway, have a good day, see you later.”
He left and Sally finished what she was doing. The files, on Sue’s desk, beckoned, so she went and had a look. Alf had been right, there wasn’t much there to get excited about. Back at her desk, she started working on the monthly budget. As the latest promotion to the sergeant rank, it had fallen to her to make sure that they had enough to work with. She didn’t mind, as she was good with figures and she always tried to make sure that they had enough for emergencies, without having to go upstairs, cap in hand.
As the day drew to an end, the others started getting back. They were a little short for the moment. The boss, DCI Susan Cousins, as well as DI ‘Lean’ Skinner, were down in London at a seminar on modern methods of policing. As far as Sally had learned, this meant doing more with less. DS Martin (Super) Henderson came in with Sally’s two team members; DC’s Jerry (Ben) Britten and Harry (Charlie) Parker. They had been at the courts where the stately house robbers were being tried.
“How did it go, lads?”
“They both got five years, as it was the first offence. Mind you, I reckon that if we went further back in their histories, we’d find that they’ve been nicking stuff from an early age. There was some things that wasn’t allowed to be presented as it was juvenile records.”
“At least it was a result. I’ve done the finals on the files. They’re on your desk, Ben. All you have to do is add the court results and you can both sign them off.”
“Thanks, Sally. You’re a brick! Is there anything else for us to sink our teeth into?”
“Other than a steak, tonight, nothing that I know.”
Jack Brownlee came over and dropped a file on the desk.
“You can look into this one. It should only take a day. Looks like someone has her knickers in a twist over nothing.”
He walked away and Sally looked at the file.
“That one, my lads, is a death by natural causes that has been flagged for our attention. We will need to talk to the complainant, as well as the doctor, before we can sign off on it. Tomorrow, I think. Time to go home, go to the pub, or, in my case, pick up my lad from school. See you in the morning.”
The next morning, Sally and Ben phoned the complainant and went to see her.
“Thank you for seeing us, Miss Williams. If you don’t mind, I’ll be recording this conversation so it can be transcribed into our report.”
“That’s perfectly all right, Detective Brown. I’m just happy that someone has listened to me.”
“Can you tell me what your relationship was with the deceased, Fred Williams, and why you think that his death was less than natural?”
“Fred was my husband. We had a love/hate relationship. In the end, we divorced, but kept in touch. Although he was approaching seventy, he was still strong and vigorous. Extremely so when we were together. It was better than when we were married. I could be satisfied but not have to put up with his moods.”
“We’ll be talking to his doctor, but are there any reasons that you could give us for his dying? The report from the first attendees said that he was found on his kitchen floor, on the Tuesday afternoon, and had been dead around six hours.”
“I had stayed overnight on Saturday and left after breakfast. He was hale and hearty and full of beans when I went. We made an appointment for the following weekend. We would be going out to dinner, seeing it was after the pension.”
“The unit he was in, that is a council one, isn’t it?”
“Yes. When we divorced, we sold the house and split it. He had a good job, while he was working, but it included a lot of driving. He made it a regular thing to walk after he retired and was a much better man for it.”
“Tell me more?”
“Fred was diabetic. He had lived a life in the driving seat and on terrible food from fast food outlets. He had been on pills for it, and his high blood pressure since he was about fifty-five. When he retired, he started the walking and lost a lot of weight. He also gave up smoking and drinking. He was determined to live until he was a hundred. His doctor was very happy with how he was doing.”
“We’ll be speaking to him, this afternoon. Tell me, did you only see him on weekends?”
“Yes, he was looked after by one of the lionesses during the week. They would visit every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. It was one that found him and called the ambulance.”
“Lionesses?”
“Nurses that came in to see how he was doing and do any washing or cleaning he needed. He always was a lazy sod around the house. It’s a company that looks after the elderly who are living at home. It’s actually called Live-In Outreach Nursing Society, or Lions for short. Their logo is almost a rip-off of the old MGM film logo, a lion in the middle with the name around the outside. His will has left them five thousand, with the rest split between me and our two daughters.”
“These lionesses, did he have a regular one?”
“No, they have a lot on their books, everyone a qualified nurse. They visit when they’re in the area. I think there was about five that would see him, seeing as they would be seeing others nearby. There was no regularity, though.”
“So, the money will go to the organisation, rather than any one nurse?”
“As far as I know. The will said that it was a donation to the organisation. Not that they need it, with the prices they charge for their services. The more you see them, the more you pay. I’ve been looking into that sort of thing for when I get so that I can’t look after myself. I think that when that time comes, I’ll just slash my wrists and save the money!”
“Thank you, Miss Williams. I think that I have enough to move forward. We’ll let you know if we need anything else. Just one thing, before we go. Was Fred buried or cremated?”
“He was cremated. I was hoping to have somewhere I could put flowers but there was a note on his contract with the Lions to cremate him. I suppose that this had been put in if he had died without anyone to make those arrangements. Me and the girls only had a week to make our own arrangements to be there. I suppose it would have been a bit different if we’d still been married.”
“Did the company, or the nurses, know that you were seeing him, regularly?”
“I doubt it unless he told them. He used to joke that his neighbours thought that he had a standing order with the local knocking shop, with me on his arm on Saturday nights.”
“All right. Unless you have any questions, we’ll be on our way.”
Once in the car, Ben said what they both were thinking.
“So, we have an elderly, but not old, man, with enough get up and go to satisfy his ex, almost every weekend. He’s fit and healthy but drops dead on a Tuesday morning. When I looked at the medical report, it just said that he had simply died, but, although no foul play was considered, they couldn’t tell if the heart stopped before he stopped breathing or the other way round. Shouldn’t that have been grounds for an autopsy?”
“If there had been other factors, such as arguments, enemies or someone known to have been with him. My reading of the report said that the neighbours had seen him on Monday evening and that nobody had visited him before the carer. I’m still not convinced.”
In the afternoon, they were ushered into the doctor’s office.
“Good of you to see us, Doctor. We’re here to ask you a few simple questions about one of your patients, a Frederick Williams, recently deceased.”
“What do you want to know, detectives? I’ll just get his file up on the computer.”
“We’re told that he was a long-term diabetic with high blood pressure. Can you tell us anything about his history?”
“I’ve been treating Fred for nigh on twenty years. When I first saw him, he was overweight, in poor health, and a smoker. He was using a sleep apnoea machine at the time, and he complained that he had to sleep in a separate room because the sound of the fan. He was starting type two diabetes, and his blood pressure was constantly high. I put him on the ‘holy trinity’ of medications that we were using at those times. He took a metformin and gliclazide combination, with a blood pressure reducer. After he retired, and finally started walking, he lost weight. His glucose levels were good until the covid started, then the lack of exercise did to him the thing that it had done to thousands like him. The readings started to lift, and he was, by that time, out of practice with the exercise. Two years ago, I changed his primary medication to one which added another ingredient to the metformin, and the readings stabilised at a lower level.”
“Were those his only problems? Could he have just died in his sleep?”
“He had stopped using the CPAP machine, as losing weight allowed him easier sleeping. Or, at least, as easy as a diabetic on medication can have. He would have needed a couple of trips to the toilet during the night. Perhaps I should have sent him to a sleep test, but he always reported that he felt good and awake during the day, so it didn’t seem urgent. If he had died in bed, it could have been that he had stopped breathing. The police that looked at his death asked me that, and I had to tell them that you don’t just stop breathing during the day. As far as I was concerned, his heart was as good as anyone.”
“The report showed that they couldn’t tell if the heart or the lungs stopped first.”
“That’s not a diagnosis that I would have given. So, they just looked at his medical records and written him off! Mind you, that’s not the first I’ve heard of. Some departments are so overworked, it’s no wonder they take the easy way out. What’s another old man between friends.”
“You say it’s not the first. Would you care to elaborate?”
“Look, I don’t know for certain, but talking to other doctors, we have all noticed a lift in fatalities among the older generation over the last couple of years. If we discount the known covid cases, I think that the number of the elderly on our books who have dropped dead, like Fred, may be higher that it was pre-covid. It could be a residual of covid symptoms, but I have my doubts.”
“Is it possible for you to look in your records and send me a list of the ones that you’re suspicious about? We can check with the official reports. We would appreciate it.”
“I’ll have a think about that, and I’ll talk to the other doctors, here. I’ll email you a list as soon as I can. Of course, we are just one clinic. I don’t know if any others have seen similar numbers. That’s for you to check.”
“Do you know what area your patients are from?”
“Fred was over the other side of the Brookvale Park. We have three hospitals within walking distance from this clinic, and I would think that we, along with the out-of-hours clinic would be looking after everyone within a couple of miles.”
“Do you know of a company called Lions?”
“Oh, yes. They do a great job of looking after our patients who are still living at home. We have quite a number who see the nurses, some more often than others. It does save us the time if we don’t have to see them for the slightest sniffles.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I’ll look forward to looking at your list. If there’s any questions, I’ll get back to you.”
Back in the car, Sally sat for a few moments. Ben was also quiet. He then cleared his throat.
“Boss. If I tell you that something sucks, would you believe me?”
“I would, Ben. It’s almost like it was when we were given that file with the suicides. Something doesn’t look right with this. I’m with you on the ‘how did he really die’ question. It was listed as unimportant, rather than unusual. I don’t think that we’ll write this off, just yet.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“What we do, Ben, is get you and Charlie going through that report with a fine-tooth comb. We need to speak to the Lioness who found him, the paramedics who attended, and the police who signed off that it wasn’t suspicious. Only then will we have enough information to decide on what we tell Sue. If you two work on putting that list together, tomorrow, I’ll get an appointment to talk to the head lion, or whatever the company boss calls himself.”
The following morning saw Sally parking outside the offices of the Lions. It was a standard property, in an industrial area, with enough land for a decent shed, with an attached office entry. When she entered, she was surprised to see a warm and welcoming reception area with a girl behind a desk which was obviously also a work desk. When she gave her name, the girl motioned her to go into the shed part and see the man on the first office to the right.
As Sally went through the door, she found herself in a short corridor, with two offices each side, and the end opening to the shed area. The first office to the right, so she saw through the glass, contained a small man in an open-neck shirt, gazing at a computer screen with a look that she had seen on others. It was the look of wishful thinking. She knocked and he looked up to beckon her in. She sat on the offered seat in front of his desk.
“Mister Hobson, I’m Detective Sergeant Brown. Your PA set me up with this appointment.”
“Yes, Detective. How can I help you?”
“We are looking into a case where one of your clients was found by one of your employees. I’m trying to build a picture of how your company works, and who may have been seeing this particular client. If you give me the overview, please.”
“Well, to start with, we are an arm of a national company. Each office has its own name to trade by. There are four offices in Birmingham and about two hundred around the country. We supply live-in help to pensioners and disabled clients; from just popping in to make sure that they’re taking their medication, to giving injections, changing dressings, cleaning, and washing. We don’t do anything to do with food, there are other organisations that have that covered. We have forty-seven who work from here, each using their own car. They are all employed as casuals, so are independent operators. We supply the medical equipment. Medicines and specialised equipment are prescribed by the doctors.”
“How do the payments work?”
“It depends on what the client needs. We can do a visit once a week, just to check. That’s the cheapest. It then goes up to visiting every day, with cleaning and washing, and medical assistance. We have mostly clients who are not old, or ill enough to be in an aged care home. They are sometimes prescribed the service by their doctor, and the NHS pays the bill. We’re not cheap, but we are still cheaper than a full-time patient in hospital.”
“What about the payments to the nurses?”
“They get paid a set amount per visit, based on what the client has contracted for. We have some who see eight to ten clients a day and there are others who may only see a couple a day, it all depends on the qualifications a nurse would have.”
“What about Frederick Williams, I believe he was seen twice a week?”
“Yes, poor Fred. He had been a client for about four years. I’ll just call his file up. Ah! There he is. He was an easy call, about twenty minutes a visit, just to ensure that he was up and about, his pantry was stocked and that he was mobile. We didn’t do any medications for him; what he was on would have been taken after his breakfast and dinner. He was one of those who had around five or six of our staff who would see him, depending on their rounds. With that type of client, it’s a company policy to mix the nurses, so that there is no dependency on any one nurse. With the more difficult cases, it’s usual to have a single nurse see the client, that creates a level of control over them, which many need.”
“Do your nurses offer advice?”
“Not usually. If they see a fit person who isn’t getting around, they may chide them to get off their easy chair. A lot of the single clients eat the wrong things, not having someone to tell them off. Many eat too many cakes or too much chocolate. It’s their life and we don’t get involved.”
“Can I have a list of the nurses who used to see Fred Williams, please?”
“Of course. I can email you his file if you want. Now he’s dead, there’s no problem.”
“Have you had many of your clients die suddenly?”
“It depends on what you mean by sudden. If they’re taken off to hospital, they are off our books, so we don’t know when they die. With clients, like Fred, we may get three or four a month, where they’re found in their home. We have a standard procedure that all of the nurses follow. Paramedics first, then the police. It’s up to the police to contact the relatives.”
“What about disposal of the body? Fred was cremated, so I’m told, on your orders.”
“We have that on our contract form for those without close relatives. Girlfriends, boyfriends, ex-wives, or husbands don’t count. Legal partners, sons and daughters get first say.”
“I’m told that Fred had daughters?”
“They are both older than his marriage, so not considered close relatives, even if he was their father, as far as our contract is concerned.”
“I’m told that he left you some money in his will?”
“That’s good. It will pay for the funeral service. We do have insurance which covers that if nothing is left. I’m sure that he had been told that when he signed up. We generally tell new clients that five thousand is a good figure if they want us to do the final rites.”
“Tell me. Why the big shed?”
“That’s easy. We have a couple of hoists, and we do repairs and maintenance on the cars, at cost. Those nurses do a considerable mileage and getting the cars looked at in a normal garage would send them broke. I expect that your car is looked after by the police garage. We also have good stock of various items that the nurses carry as emergency supplies.”
“You keep saying ‘nurses’. Do you employ male nurses as well?”
“Oh! yes. About a third of our casuals are men. Some of them are very good. Before you ask; every one of our staff have had police checks, and none have anything on their records that preclude them from working with the elderly.”
“Is that just in this country?”
“Yes. Many are from overseas, but the cost of checking them out would be prohibitive.”
“Thank you for your help. If you can email me that file, it would help. Here’s my card. Before I go, do you think that the number of sudden deaths has increased, since covid. I was told, yesterday, that it may be twice or three times what it had been prior to twenty-twenty. Would it be possible for you to also send me the files of any cases where your nurses have been the ones to find a dead client. It’s not urgent but would help me eliminate any whiff of suspicion from this case. At the moment, I’m really not sure why Fred died, so can’t sign off that it was natural causes.”
“I’ll put one of the staff on looking them up for you. Will just a list be all right?”
“That will be good. I can then check with the police report which will give me the basics. If I need more, I’ll be in touch.”
Back in her car, she went to the station, where Ben and Charlie were peering at a computer screen.
“What’s so interesting, lads?”
“It’s a list that the doctor has sent. He has spoken to others, and they’ve compiled a list of a dozen where there was no reason for the death, as far as they were concerned. In his email he said that even they were shocked at the number, once they looked closely. We’re printing off the police report and the medical report for each one. How did you get on with the Lion King?”
“He’s as hard worked as we are. Mind you, I would love to see their profit and loss sheet. He has forty-odd nurses, all working as independent contractors on a casual basis and paid by the visit. They have a couple of hoists to look after their cars, so he tells me. He only charges them cost, which would include the pay of the mechanic. All he’s shelling out is on rent, insurance and the office staff. From what Miss Williams told us about the charges, I would say that they’re doing very nicely. Let’s do as much as we can with that list of yours, and I’ll tee up a visit to the paramedics and police officers for tomorrow. Then, we’ll set up a talk with the nurse, on Monday.”
They could talk to the paramedics at the ambulance station, early the next morning, while they restocked the ambulance and waited for a call-out. The police officers would be on duty now, so Sally rang their station to see if they could organise a meeting. She was told when they came off shift. The sergeant said that he would give them a call not to rush off.
They all went to the station later in the afternoon and talked with the duty sergeant while they waited. He said that he had noted more deaths of older people being spoken about. He showed them the daybook for the week before. There were three that the responding constables had reported in one afternoon, alone. Ben made a note of the date and the names to check with his list. When the officers came in, they tried not to hold them up, just asking about the attendance at the dead man’s unit.
“That looked straight forward,” one of them said. “He was on his back when we got there, with the paramedics just packing up their gear. The nurse had gone to another patient. They get paid by the visit, so she would have been out of pocket if she’d stayed.”
“So, you didn’t actually speak to her?”
“No. We have spoken to her on other occasions, and this looked cut and dried.”
“Other occasions?”
“Well, what with covid and everything, some of these oldies are keeling over with monotonous regularity. We know of three in one day, recently.”
“Yes, the duty Sarge has shown us the daybook. How many different nurses have you spoken to, just a rough count?”
He looked at his partner.
“It must be ten or fifteen. There’s a lot of them working with the live ins so it would only be normal that they find some who have died, sudden like.”
“Do you think that there are more, lately?”
“Oh, yes. Going back a few years we would only attend about one of these a month. Now it could be two or three a week.”
“There’s something I’ve noticed,” his partner said. “They seem to be keeling over at a younger age. Take Fred, for instance. You would have given him another ten or twenty years if you had met him. He used to have the odd drink in the pub we go to, when his darts team were playing there. Nice guy, full of beans. I have to say that I felt sad to see him stretched out on the floor.”
“Thank you, officers. We are working on the assumption that there could have been foul play unless the facts tell us otherwise. The cause of death was never verified, and he’s already been cremated. I think that we’ll have to put out a request that any future deaths are more closely reported. From the reports I’ve seen, it looks as if everyone has just decided that old folk die. If we have to request autopsies on all the suspicious ones, we’ll probably get howled down, but one good case, where we can truly determine a reason will go a long way to help. Remember that as you are on the beat. Photos and good notes, please.”
“Yes Sarge, always ready to help, that’s us.”
Taking the others back to the station, Sally thought about what they needed to do.
“Tomorrow, I’ll go and talk to the paramedics. What I want the two of you to do is to go through the files of those other cases. See if there are any similarities. There should be a list from the Lions with the names of the regular nurses that Fred saw. While you’re doing that, ring the other doctors in the area, say, out three or four miles from Fred’s home, and ask them to have a conversation, between the doctors in the clinics, to see if they have any similar cases where they had misgivings. Then ring a selection of clinics out to eight miles out and ask the same question. If this is a local thing, the more likely that it’s foul play.”
“Right, boss. We are looking for premature deaths, in older people, where they are living at home with visiting nurses, right?”
“That’ll do for a start. If anyone wants more, tell them that we’re looking for cases where the cause of death isn’t clear. Oh! While you’re about it, set up a spreadsheet with the names, addresses, illnesses, and medications, as well as who found the body and a likely time of death.”
She dropped them by their cars and went home.
Marianne Gregory © 2023
Chapter 2
Next morning, Sally met with the paramedics when they arrived for work.
“Thanks for seeing me, gentlemen. Can you tell me about the time you attended Fred Williams?”
“It was a pretty normal visit. The guy had died, the attending nurse had called it in when she found him. He was on the floor, on his front. He had vomited and is bladder had emptied.”
“Vomited? That wasn’t in the official report. Was it where he was found, or was it in other places in his home?”
“It looked like it had happened some time before, there was a pool by the kitchen table, and another in the hallway. It looked like he was heading for the toilet before he finally collapsed in the hall.”
“Have you had many like this, where the patient had vomited before dying?”
“There has been a few, can’t tell you the exact times, but now you mention it, we have noticed a few, especially where we have to avoid the pools as we work. Not good going on to the next call smelling of puke.”
“Look, lads. Can you put it around this station. If you get called to any of these where there’s a similar scenario, can you give me a call. Here’s a bunch of cards to pass around. What I want to do is get a proper examination done as soon after the death as I can. Something is killing elderly people and I’m sure it’s not the grim reaper.”
Back in the office, she wrote up her notes and then rang the police doctor.
“Doctor Herbert, it’s Sergeant Brown from Aston. I just have a couple of questions for you if you have some moments.”
“No problem, Detective. How can I help?”
“Do you know of a poison which takes a little while to work, with the victim vomiting prior to death. The case I’m looking at couldn’t tell if the heart stopped before the lungs.”
“Hmmm! There are a few that would fit the bill. The most common could be hemlock, I think. It would take a good dose to cause the effect you’re talking about, although some variations are deadly in doses over a hundred and fifty milligrams. It’s been a favourite of crime writers for hundreds of years, seeing that there are a number of variations of the plant, and they all grow freely in some countries, and are considered weeds in some. I believe that they were cultivated in America as a decorative flowering shrub.”
“How easy would it be to administer?”
“There are many ways. You could just have the leaves as a salad. You could chop them up and sprinkle them over food. You could grind them into a powder and add them to food or liquids. The most common cause of death with it is the paralysis of the lungs. Is that enough?”
“Thank you, doctor. That really helps. What do I need from a body to get a test result?”
“Blood would be good, there should be remnants of the alkaloid. One thing to note, though, is that it could take an hour to die after the victim has collapsed, and paralysis had set in. If you can find a victim who was immobile but not dead, it could be possible to keep them alive with assisted breathing, as they are conscious but unable to move. It would be a lonely death.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that fact in mind.”
She sat back and thought about what she had been told. If it was hemlock, then she needed to discover how it was administered. Only then could she get closer to finding out who could be in the mix as the murderer, as it was more like murder that she thought was happening. The results of the work that Ben and Charlie was working on would help them decide.
Over the next few days, and into the following week, they received emails from various clinics. They had a spreadsheet, as well as a map. What emerged was that the extra deaths were, in fact, localised, with doctors outside the area not seeing any abnormal numbers.
With what they had; they took it to Sue.
“Cuz, we think that we have a situation where someone is killing old folks. From the symptoms, the doc thinks it could be hemlock. We’ve just spent a week or so putting together a spreadsheet. It shows that all the victims lived in an area around three miles from the intersection of College Road and Chester Road. All of the victims have dealings with a visiting nursing company, called Live-In Outreach Nursing Society. They are located in an industrial building in the Holcroft Industrial Estate. Not all of them were actually being treated by these nurses but were partners of someone who was.”
“Hmm! From the serious looks on your faces, there has to be more?”
“Yes, boss. We’ve canvassed the clinics in the local area and looked at all the reports that we could get. The upshot is that all, and I do mean all, of the victims were in good health but all were diabetics. The other thing is that none of them showed any indication of an early death, and none of them were tested for toxins. The situation is that the local respondents have become complacent and just put the deaths down as a symptom of old age. Even when a cause of death was asked for, the only answer that had been given was either that they stopped breathing, if they died during the night, or else the heart had just stopped, if they were found out of bed. The numbers drop to historical normal once we get further out.”
“Talking about numbers, how many are we looking at, a dozen or so?”
“Sorry, Sue. We have a list of thirty-two over the last few years. We haven’t even spoken to the hospitals yet. The aged-care homes have all come back saying that their numbers are within the usual guidelines.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“We will have to tread carefully with the hospitals inside the perimeter. I will go and talk to them and ask them about sudden deaths. I expect that any that they had during the day would have been properly checked, but they may have a couple who had died in their sleep. I need to see all of the doctors and find out what medications the victims were on. I can’t see how a poison could have been introduced as most pills are blister packed these days.”
“So, what do you need from me?”
“There’s a lot of paperwork to go through, more as we get into the case. We will need to cross-check the medications. For that we will need to talk to every doctor. We will also need to do background checks on all of the nurses that have seen the victims; they don’t visit on a regular roster, so that there isn’t too much familiarity. The company say they have checked all of the nurses, but only in this country. A lot of them are from overseas, so we should start getting answers from their countries of origin. We have no idea of the method of administration, or even a hint on who the murderer is. Whoever it is has a very clever method, so that they’re not linked to any death, directly. What I would like is for us to get a loan of a couple of our team, so that the three of us can go out to get more details. There are partners of the victims to speak to, the hospitals to follow up, and a number of paramedics to see. I’m not going anywhere near the nurses until we have narrowed the search area.”
“All right. I’ll get Jack and Lee to help out, as they can, while you three find out as much more as you can. When they come in, I’ll send them over. Get them up to speed and go hunting.”
“Thanks, Cuz. There’s so much that we need to know before we get a good handle on this one. We’ll need to alert the paramedics and uniformed to report any case they think is suspect, when we have more to go on.”
During that day, Sally set up meetings with the managers of all the close hospitals and palliative care homes, it would take her a week as there were about twenty to see. Ben and Charlie set up meetings with all the doctors who had been named as treating the victims on the current list. When Jack and Lee came over to them, they showed them the line of investigation they wanted followed. The first thing was to do overseas background checks on the nurses. This would take quite a while.
The Hospital Administrator of the first hospital Sally spoke to was adamant that they had no unusual deaths in any hospital he ran. Sally persisted and asked if she could talk to the records office, to see if there had been any deaths, overnight, that were unexpected. The records secretary remembered one that had bothered her and pulled the file. It fitted the others, in that it was an elderly woman, a type 2 diabetic, who had been in for a minor treatment on her veins. She had been fit in the evening before her surgery, but dead when looked at first thing in the morning. Sally took notes and thanked the girl and asked her to let her know if there were any others that she could remember.
Over the course of the next week, she saw many unbelieving administrators but found another five cases of unusual overnight deaths. When these were added to the spreadsheet, they could see the pattern matching. Ben and Charlie had added to the data with a sub-base of cases where the victim had been found, in bed, having drowned in their vomit. Some had been breathing through a CPAP machine and sleeping alone, to be found by their partner. These had been added by doctors and paramedics who had started questioning all of the odd cases that they knew of, once they had started thinking hard and talking among themselves. The list of cases which looked suspect now numbered over forty.
Jack and Lee had compiled a list of the overseas nurses that had been involved with Fred Williams and had received background checks from all but one. That one was a South African immigrant, who had been in the country five years. The South African authorities could find no person with that name and birthday with a record. They did say that she could have been raised in one of the outlying townships and hadn’t been registered.
With the names of the nurses, the three detectives went out to talk to the partners or friends of the names on their list. Sally went to speak to a number of women, many who had discovered their partner. The general consensus was that the Lions nurses were all very good at their job, with four or five being remembered, fondly, as professional as well as friendly. Sally asked about the medications that their partners had taken and was told that the nurses from Lions had popped in to take them away, to destroy them.
She rang Ben to tell him to ask about the medications and to see if he could get an example of them. By the end of the week, they discovered that Lions had been extremely responsible with old medications, having collected all leftovers. Sally rang the Lions office and asked about this, only to be told that it was common practice when someone had died, leaving medications behind. Sally wondered if they had a little side hustle by creating full packets and selling them.
Ben and Charlie had been talking to the widowers and friends, only finding out similar things. One thing that did stand out was the timing. In every case that they could pinpoint, the deaths fell into common times. The night deaths were between seven and midnight, with the partners or neighbours hearing the coughing, before the silence allowed them to think that everything was all right. The day deaths were, whenever they could pinpoint the start of the last minutes, between nine and noon, some neighbours hearing a bang, followed by quiet. In these cases, no-one wanted to be involved.
They were no closer to either the method, the reasons, or the murderer by the end of that week. The only nurse with overseas connections that was still unaccounted for was the South African one. Working through the immigration records, Lee finally found her entering the country off a freighter from Durban.
It took another week, trying to get some details from the Durban police. They had her on their books as a holistic healer, who dabbled in plant-based self-medications, and totally law-abiding. She was only on their records because of a case where she had been robbed. She had left the country, after selling up her property, on a freighter bound for England. The freighter part was, as far as they were concerned, straight forward. The woman had applied for, and got, a job as the ships medico. When asked about unusual deaths among older people, they did say that there had been a spike in the number of deaths around that time, but this had been thought of as a result of a particular hot, dry, and windy summer.
The freighter company was contacted, and they were told that the medico position was an emergency job, as the ship picked up a company medico when it docked in England, and the woman was allowed to enter the country, on a provisional visa. She had applied for, and received, a working visa, seeing that she had skills that were in short supply. So far, it looked all above board. As a matter of course, Lee requested the entry details, but he knew that it could take a few weeks to get them.
In the meantime, there hadn’t been an unusual death in the area. Sally, Ben, and Charlie spent a lot of time in doctor’s surgeries, getting personal remembrances about the deceased, from the one person who saw them most. It was during this time that Charlie asked a doctor how on earth someone could poison blister- sealed pills.
“They don’t all come like that, officer. The ones my patient used to take were all packed that way. The new medication that I prescribed comes in a plastic container. It’s a new drug mix that helps those taking pills only. It reduces the glucose and drops the readings. We only put patients on these when they are averaging ten and over, it usually brings them back into the eights. It’s just metformin, with a small amount of another drug. The plastic bottle has a foil seal, but, once that’s been removed, there’s just a child-proof cap.”
“How big is the pill? Is there a way I can see an example?”
“The original dose was 1000 milligrams, but the addition brings it up to 1050 milligrams. I’ll talk to the company rep, next time he calls in, and ask him to drop a sample bottle for you at Aston. He’s due in a couple of days.”
Three days later, they were all busy on the phones, asking all of the doctors and clinics about the names on their list. In every case, the patient was now taking the new drug. The sample bottle, with a couple of pills in it, had been delivered. It would be easy, they thought, for someone to just open it and drop in a doctored pill, shake it up and wait for the time that it was that pill that was taken.
After that, it was down to walking and talking. They asked all of the doctors to supply a list of all patients, who could be a customer of Lions, and who were taking that drug. They didn’t want to ask the Lions for a list, seeing as they were now definite suspects in the deaths.
Sue had been in touch with Forensics, and the four of them had accurate digital callipers, along with the standard size of the pill, and the allowance for variation. It seemed a simple idea. Start at one end of the search area, then work towards the other end, measuring pills. Many of the people they called on were quite happy to pour the contents of their container onto a tray and wait while each pill was measured. It was Charlie who found the first oddity. He rang Sue, to tell her to text the others.
“Sue, the odd pill that I’ve found is about a millimetre shorter than it should be, and the number, in the top side, is not as precise. If you’re taking these, it would be hard to pick. It looks like it has been made in a home pill-press. I’ve put it in an evidence bag. Forensics can check it out.”
Sue texted the others, and ordered Charlie to deliver it to forensics as soon as he could. By the end of the first week, they had found five odd pills. They took the details of which nurses visited each patient. With the one that Sally found, it was one of just a few in the container, so the patient opened a new one, and tipped the few extra into it, allowing Sally to put the container in an evidence bag to take to forensics, along with the suspect pill. It didn’t take long for a report to arrive on Sue’s desk. All the pills were crushed hemlock, with a small amount of the original drug and some edible colouring.
The following week, they carried on visiting patients, until the middle of Wednesday morning, when Sue texted them with the news that a patrol had called in with a suspicious death, only a few streets from where Sally was working.
She was at the scene inside ten minutes, and saw, for herself, what had happened. The woman had collapsed in her hallway, looking like she was heading for the front door. The Lioness that found her was still there, along with the paramedics and the police. Sally called in a forensic team to process the scene, while she spoke to the nurse, after getting the paramedic’s details for a later chat. The police responders were charged with keeping sightseers away.
After taking a statement from the nurse, she watched as the forensic team did their thing. She saw, for herself, that the victim had vomited, well before the collapse site. She asked for a blood sample to be taken. When the forensic guy asked her what he should be looking for, she just said “Hemlock traces.”
She joined another officer to search the bathroom and bedroom, finding no trace of any medication. She stood and sighed.
“What are you looking for, Sarge?”
“Medication, Jim. I was hoping to find the drugs that she should be taking if she was a diabetic.”
“You’re in the wrong place, then. Those pills are taken after meals, morning, and night, and I expect that we’ll find them in the kitchen, close at hand.”
They moved to the kitchen, and she allowed him to open cupboards until he found the plastic container, as well as two other packets of blister-pack pills that made up what she was now thinking of as the diabetic’s holy trinity.
Sue put an urgent request in with forensics, and the results of the tests were reported the next afternoon. Cause of death was hemlock poisoning. The container had just four sets of prints, with the main ones that overlapped two others being the victim. There were traces of another set, which matched those taken off the container that Sally had brought in earlier.
Sue went to see the Chief Superintendent, to speed up the search for odd pills, so that they could stop any more deaths. He authorised a large team of uniformed officers to continue the search, after Sally had instructed them. He authorised the purchase of callipers, and Charlie was able to get a box of cheaper, plastic ones. With the variation in size, that they were looking for, these would do the job. Sally, Ben, Charlie, and Lee took the new force through what they were looking for, with them practising on normal and odd pills. With that, they were sent out to finish the search. With the number they had on the ground, they completed the job in ten days, with the addition of eight suspect pills.
In the meantime, the team homed in on the Lion nurses. They obtained a search warrant and raided the office, along with a forensic team. All of the staff were kept in the front office while they searched the shed area, with forensics taking prints off of all the fifty lockers that were along one wall. They asked for the master key to the lockers and searched those as well. When they left, they had the list of who used what locker.
The fingerprints on Locker Seventeen matched the prints on the two containers that had contained poisoned pills. Fingerprints taken from all the other containers were still working through the system. The fingerprints were on the locker used by Aggie Starenburg, the nurse from South Africa.
Their problems began when they asked the Lion manager when Aggie was next rostered on, and what her contact details were. That’s when he told them that she had missed her last shifts. The last one that she had reported her calls was the day after the discovery of the last death.
“Looks like she had heard that we were taking that death as murder, boss.”
“You’re right, Ben. She could have heard about it from the nurse that discovered the body. I have to give it to her, she’s quick. I expect that the spike in deaths, in Durban, could have been her doing. We’ll never know. What we have to do, now, is catch her.”
The manager had given them the contact details of Aggie. It was no surprise to find that the address was a piece of vacant land, in a row of condemned houses, about to be demolished for a new cluster housing estate.
The fingerprints were sent to Durban, to double-check that they had the right person, seeing that Aggie’s prints would had been taken to eliminate hers from the robbery. A week later, they had a long message from the Durban police. The prints had not matched, and based on a new suspicion, they had visited the house with ground-penetrating radar and found the real Aggie Starenburg buried, in pieces, in the garden, under a fresh crop of hemlock. The current owner of the house had thought that these were just a pretty flower and was quite upset when they were removed.
The prints did, however, match those of a suspected murderer in Cape Town, some years prior. That person had been in her late teens, which was consistent with the likely age of Sally’s quarry. She was called Khayone Booysen. A couple of days later, an email arrived with the case file attached. When Sally and the team read it, they were now certain that they had the right person in their sights.
Khayone had been a good student and had excelled in biology. She had been offered a job with the local zoo, to give her work experience. While she had been there, a number of animals had suddenly been found, dead. She had gone from there to study nursing. She disappeared after the police started investigating three suspicious deaths. The last had been sent for an autopsy and traces of hemlock had been found. When her home was raided, they found a pill-press in the shed and a nice row of hemlock plants in the garden. Her parents were horrified and told the officers that Khayone had come home, packed her suitcase, and left, telling them that she had been offered a nursing job in Soweto.
That was a month before the robbery at Aggie’s home. The thinking was that the break-in had been to check the lie of the land, and that Khayone had killed Aggie, then taken over her life, some days, or weeks, later. There was a rider, with the autopsy report on the remains of Aggie, with cause of death being from a heavy blow to the head. An empty wine bottle had been found, next to the body parts, with the prints now shown to match Khayone. She had lived, as Aggie, for about five years, as an herbalist and holistic healer. It seemed that Aggie had been a recluse to start with and had no friends to speak of. No records of her customers was found, so it was impossible to link her with any of the spike in deaths.
Sue called a team meeting. The case was dissected and discussed. They were left with a suspect who had skipped two investigations, ahead of the police, and had now disappeared as they started to obtain their own evidence. All they were left with was the photo on her name-badge record from the Lion’s. It was decided that every nurse in that company needed to be interviewed carefully in case they had been given some information from Khayone that would lead them to where she had been living.
It took a few days, but a couple of the other nurses told them that Aggie had spoken about a South African Restaurant within walking distance of where she lived, and that there was a store that sold South African food, but this one was some way to the south. Every interview had been about how friendly and welcoming she had been, and how shocked everyone was when they learned that she had been killing the clients. The news had come out, to the general public, in the local paper. Most feedback was in two camps – one being how good the police were to stop the murder spree, and the other wondering why it took so long.
Sally, Ben, Charlie, and Lee were still working on the case, and hit the internet to see what they could find. They discovered the Jubulani Restaurant in Shrewsbury, inside the loop of the River Severn. The other place could have been The Hillray Biltong shop, way south in Gloucester. They had a good look at the map of Shrewsbury and started calling Real Estate Agents inside The Loop, to ask about female tenants who they knew were South African. One did say that they had a tenant who was close to exceeding their period of grace with the rental payment.
Sally asked them to wait until the team arrived, and she drove them all to Shrewsbury, parking in a car park, streetside parking being so poor inside the old walls. They walked to the Real Estate Office and sat down with the manager. The tenant was called Christina Hendricks, a self-employed photographer. The flat was over a shop, with a locked gate leading to a rear set of steps. It was only a short way from the car park.
The agent opened the gate and led them up. As soon as he opened the door, Sally stopped him.
“No further, sir. I think that there may be something inside that’s rotting, and it doesn’t smell like old bread.”
He was sent back down the stairs, while the four of them donned gloves and masks to look inside. It only took a few minutes before they were back outside, happy to breath fresh air. Ben had called Sue, with the address, to send a forensics team in to process the flat. They waited until that team arrived and spoke to the Inspector to get all the results to Sue as soon as he could. They asked for the identity of the victim first. A squad car from the local station was now at the scene and they asked them if they could organise a search of the surrounding area, to see if they could find any small crops of the hemlock plants.
Over the next few days, the results came in. The dead girl was Christina Hendricks, and she had died from a stab wound in the back, the knife found beside her body, with the prints on the handle being the same as the ones on file for Khayone.
The search of the surrounding area had found the car that Khayone had been using, parked in the car park, covered with stickers. The boot still had the nursing kit in it. No sign of the vehicle that Christina had was found. It was a van, with a lot of photography gear stored in it.
The flat indicated that the two girls had shared it for some time, with each having a separate bedroom. As far as could be seen, Khayone had taken a mix of clothes from both wardrobes. She had left the pill press, with the number that had been on the deadly pills, along with a mortar and pestle. She had left her old, or should that be Aggies, passport next to the bed, with Christina’s not to be seen.
Investigations found that both bank accounts had been cleaned out. An all-points notice was issued for Khayone, travelling as Christina Hendricks. The message came back that she had boarded a ship, travelling as a photographer, and bound for various points, including Cape Town. The van was found in the long-term car park at the docks.
The ship was contacted, and the captain verified that Christina was on board, with a ticket to Durban. He was asked not to say anything to her. The next port of call was Cape Town, in about forty hours.
“Looks like she’s going home, boss.”
“It does, Ben. I think that if she has a ticket to Durban, she’s more likely to get off in Cape Town, a place she knows well. She would only need to take the cash, and a camera bag would be big enough.”
The full case notes were sent to both Cape Town and Durban, with the docking time and the latest photo. Two days later, they got a thank you back from the Cape Town police. Khayone had been with a bus tour of the local sights, her big camera bag being easy to spot. She had sidled away from the group and that was when the followers arrested her. The camera bag only contained Euros, everything else was left in her cabin, which was all picked up before the ship sailed.
Sue called a meeting, and the likely outcome was discussed.
“I’m sorry, Sally. It looks as if Khayone will be sent to Durban, where they have an open and shut case. She’s likely to be found guilty and sent to Makhate. They don’t have the death penalty, at the moment, but I’m sure that she’ll get a long sentence, seeing the volume of evidence you have put together. I know it’s not a proper result, but it is a result and the higher ups have duly noted the number of likely deaths that you stopped.”
“That’s all right, Sue. It saves us the time to take it through the courts. The only certain case we have is the photographer, all the others could be circumstantial, even if we know they’re certain. We’ll just get back to work. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.”
Charlie laughed.
“One thing it will bring, Sue, is Ben, Lee, and myself starting a fitness regime. Talking to all those diabetics has shown me that it creeps up on you.”
“So, you won’t want any of the cream buns I’ve organised.”
“Didn’t I just say that it starts tomorrow!”
“I’ll give you that one, Charlie. Now, gang, the boss, upstairs has given me a heads up that you lot have done so well, over the last couple of years, that there’s going to be changes in the New Year. I don’t know the details yet, but he was smiling when he mentioned it. He even gave me a couple of bottles of bubbly to celebrate the time of the year. There’s a list on my desk, I’m giving you all rotating days off until Christmas Eve. Those on duty over the break are getting extra time. Now, let’s open these bottles and celebrate a good year, with some fantastic results. There’s a few more sitting in prison, waiting for their Christmas gruel because of you lot.”
They all filled their mugs with the bubbly and waited for Sue.
“I’m proud to be part of this group, the best bunch of detectives this side of Scotland Yard. To you all, thank you and - Merry Christmas!”
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And it’s a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone and their muse.
Marianne Gregory © 2023