The Patient Killer (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 4) (31 page)

‘Doctor, did you stalk the victims?’

‘I said I followed them. I didn’t stalk them.’

Is there a difference?
Kieran glanced down at his notes, at a loss for how to handle Carruthers. ‘You said they didn’t deserve your gifts. Why didn’t they deserve them?’

‘Hogge was a child molester. She was sleeping with a student. Why should I save a wretch like that?’

‘That, doctor, was not the question. You had already saved her. Perhaps, if you wished to stand in judgement, you should have made that call before you donated to them rather than after.’

Carruthers nodded. ‘That would have been a good plan. Perhaps next time.’

‘How about Yacobi?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘You don’t recall,’ Kieran echoed him. ‘What about Kennard? What did she do wrong?’

‘She smoked. The stupid bint smoked. Thirty years of smoking almost kills her, I save her, and she throws it away for a bit of nicotine.’

‘That’s all? You killed her over a cigarette?’ Kieran flashed back to a conversation he had had with Morton. Ethel Tewson, the old lady down the street, had seen a man offer Mrs Kennard a cigarette and a light.

‘You tested her, didn’t you? It was you who offered her the cigarette.’

‘So what? She took it,’ Carruthers said.

‘You entrapped her.’ Kieran glared, and then he realised that there was a chink in the doctor’s armour: Stapleton. ‘Why did Niall Stapleton have to die?’

‘He was in the middle of committing a burglary. I’d have thought it was obvious, even to a lawyer.’

‘So, you do remember,’ Kieran said with a grin.

‘No. That’s what you told me.’

‘You’re missing a vital detail. Niall Stapleton was being blackmailed into committing a burglary. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a man caught between stealing and losing the love of his life. He never intended to hurt anyone,’ Kieran said.

The doctor let out a low howl. ‘No! You’re lying.’

‘I’m not. Niall Stapleton did not deserve death. His fiancée was being held hostage to coerce him. He was a good man.’

The doctor began to rock back and forth as if devastated.

‘Nothing further, My Lord.’

F
riday July 17th 09:30

Carruthers had regained his composure by the time the trial resumed the next day. He rested the defence case immediately, and the trial’s end quickly approached. The only thing standing between Carruthers and a verdict was the closing arguments. The doctor was to go first, and then Kieran would have the final word.

As Carruthers turned to face the jury, he clutched his hand to his heart as if in salute.

‘I am a doctor. I save lives. But “Do No Harm” does not mean never inflict pain. Harm is a necessary part of medicine. We must cut out the sick, the cancerous, and the infected. In thirty years of medicine I have saved thousands of lives.

‘And I have killed. I have failed patients many times. I have seen the elderly and infirm leave this life the easy way and the hard way. It is far preferable to go quickly and silently into the good night than it is to go kicking and screaming.

‘I am a blood donor and an organ donor. I have personally saved dozens of lives because of my ability to share my body. I am responsible for those who lived, and I am thus responsible for their actions. If I saved a murderer or a rapist, then I caused those crimes to occur, and I must bear responsibility for that. We must all take responsibility for the things we bring about. And that is what I did.

‘I stopped the lives of those who would use that life to make the world a worse place. I saved humanity from the existence of malingerers whose lives I had extended. In doing so, I saved a great many more lives, not least of all because I opted them into the organ donation registry. Every death that occurred at my hands has saved more lives. It is a circle of virtue that knows no bounds. I have indirectly improved the lives of tens of thousands of patients and their families.

‘Perhaps I am not right in the head. I am old, and I am sick. I do not believe that I am long for this world, in any event. The prosecution would have you believe that I am merely a good actor, that I pretend to wish to save lives. I say this is a lie. I have worked tirelessly in the service of others. And surely only a crazy person would ever pretend to be crazy?

‘I ask you to send me to be treated. Treat me with the same compassion that I gave my patients, and let me live out my days in what little comfort I may find in a medical facility. I did not intend to kill anyone; quite the opposite. I tried to save everyone.’

There was nary a dry eye in the court room. When the doctor sat down, the nearest juror looked like he wanted to give him a standing ovation.

Kieran felt the pressure build. If his closing speech was anything short of spectacular, the doctor would avoid prison, and it would be his fault.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have before you a monumental task. Since the day this trial began, you’ve heard testimony from the experts. You’ve heard how Mr Carruthers strayed from the path of a healer and became, as the press are calling him, the Doctor of Death. I don’t think he’s just the Doctor of Death. Byron Carruthers is deserving of no mantle that describes him as a doctor. He has been playing God, striking down those he believed unworthy of his gifts in a cold, calculated and deliberate manner.

‘Carruthers said they didn’t deserve to live. That doesn’t mean they deserved to die – and even if they had deserved such a fate, it was not his place to see them perish at his hand.’ Kieran shot a nasty glance towards the defence table. ‘He would have you believe that he cannot recall killing Amoy Yacobi. Or Primrose Kennard. Or Niall Stapleton. Or Olivia Hogge. As if every recollection of those moments has vanished forever.

‘I say to you all, that is an outright falsehood. He lied to the police about where he was. He has had the presence of mind to turn up here every day on time and to represent himself. He has killed four people and left no forensic evidence behind whatsoever. But kill them he did.

‘This was an elaborate series of murders. Each crime took place over a protracted period, with the victims being stalked, attacked, and then left to be found in a way that symbolised their life. Amoy Yacobi was found on a meat hook. Kennard and Hogge lost the body parts they were given. These are not the actions of a man who cannot control himself. He used his skills as an anaesthetist to control his victims, and the knowledge he gained while stalking them to determine their fates. He did no less than sit in judgement of them, as you must sit in judgement of him today.

‘The doctor is a sociopath with a God complex. He does not care about others. He only cares about how others perceive him, and what he can get from them. He has been distant, difficult, sarcastic, and evasive throughout the trial. You read the transcripts of his police interviews. When confronted with the brutality of his crimes, he laughed at the victims’ expense.

‘I do not deny he has a misguided moral belief system. He may believe that he is acting in the interests of the many rather than the few, but a belief in utilitarianism does not justify brutally killing and dismembering an old lady, a teacher, and a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘Send him where he belongs: to prison. Make sure that no other human being suffers because they have slighted Doctor Carruthers’ sense of self-worth. We are all human, and we all make mistakes. That does not justify murder.’

***

T
he jury was out for days.

Morton got the message that the jury was back just in time to sneak into the public gallery and squeeze past the slew of journalists.

‘All rise!’

Morton stood as Mr Justice Quinn swept into the courtroom and took his place in the centre of the seats at the back of Court No 1 in the Old Bailey. The jury had already been seated, and they were keeping tight-lipped. None of the jurors showed much emotion, nor did they make eye contact with either the defence or the prosecution. To Morton, that felt like the foreshadowing of a compromise verdict, one that neither side would be happy with. He hoped he was wrong.

The jury had three options for each count on the indictment: guilty, not guilty, or not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

‘Have the jury reached a verdict upon which at least ten of you agree?’

The foreman, who was in the seat nearest to the judge, rose. ‘We have.’

‘Then, on the first count of the indictment, the murder of Amoy Yacobi, what is your verdict?’

The foreman cleared his throat. ‘Not guilty.’

The verdict on the first count swept around the courtroom like wildfire, every spectator whispering with those nearest them. Morton sought out Kieran’s gaze. The prosecutor gave a little shrug as if to say, ‘That was the weakest case on the docket. There’s no need to panic yet.’

Carruthers looked much less sombre. He wore a wide grin that showed off his dentures. He thought he had gotten away with it all.

‘Quiet! Quiet, please!’ Quinn said, and the room hushed. ‘On the second count of the indictment, the murder of Primrose Kennard, what is your verdict?’

‘Guilty.’

This time the prosecutor cheered.

‘Mr O’Connor! Control yourself!’ Quinn cried. ‘Save it for the Bridge Bar,’ he whispered as an afterthought. Then the judge turned to the jury. ‘Is that the verdict of you all, or by majority?’

‘Majority.’

The room fell deadly quiet. If the jurors did not have a sufficient majority to find him guilty, Carruthers might yet go free.

‘How many of you agreed, and how many of you dissented?’ Quinn asked with a hint of trepidation.

‘Ten and two, My Lord,’ the foreman said.

That was it. Carruthers was going down for a minimum life sentence. In short order the jury returned verdicts against Carruthers on counts three and four: the murders of Olivia Hogge and Niall Stapleton. All three murders were majority verdicts: ten for, two against.

‘And on the final count of the indictment, pursuant to the Human Tissue Act, what is your verdict?’

Not that it mattered. Morton watched Kieran smile for the first time in weeks.

‘Guilty,’ said the foreman.

‘Is that the verdict of you all, or by majority?’

‘All, My Lord.’

‘The court thanks the jury for their service,’ Quinn said. ‘Bailiff, you may escort them out of the courtroom.’

Carruthers sat in stony silence until the jurors were gone, and only looked up when Quinn addressed him directly.

‘Mr Carruthers, the sheer depravity of your crimes demands the harshest sentences permissible by law. You are hereby remanded to Belmarsh Prison, where you will serve three life sentences plus ten years.’ Quinn’s voice began to crack with the emotion that the judge had been suppressing for weeks. ‘You will never see the light of day again. It is no less than you deserve. Bailiff, take him away!’

Morton watched as Carruthers gave a little shrug. The man felt no guilt, no remorse, and no shame. The doctor caught Morton’s stare and gave a little wink.

It had been a strange case. Morton wanted to believe the doctor was simply incapable of human emotion, that he was a true psychopath devoid of any ability to feel. And yet, somehow, Carruthers had constructed his own code of morality. He had saved hundreds of lives. He could not be labelled so simply.

The doctor had played God. He had become judge, jury and executioner.

Morton watched the doctor as he was dragged from the courtroom in handcuffs and wondered how a man of medicine could have fallen so far from the path of non-maleficence.

Evil would always abound on the streets of London. Morton only hoped that no more like the doctor would take matters into their own hands.

M
onday July 20th 16:00

Byron Carruthers was chained and thrown into the back of a Prison Service transport van for the short hop back to Belmarsh. He was taken not to intake but directly to the prison wing, a three-storey building within the grounds of HMP Belmarsh which had its own intensive care unit and a strong link with nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich.

It was more than Carruthers deserved. The prison service treated him with more respect than he had treated his patients, and he was soon settled in a single room with easy access to the dialysis machines necessary to prolong his life.

It was during the first of these sessions that he chatted with Nurse Sally Cooper, a kindly older woman who was new enough to working in a prison medical ward that she had not yet become inured to the antics of inmates.

‘Sally,’ Carruthers said casually, ‘do you believe in atonement?’

‘I believe in punishment. It’s why I came to work here.’ Sally buzzed around the dialysis machine, and then began to see to finding a vein in the doctor’s arm.

‘An eye for an eye? How about a life for a life? Would you sentence a man to death for murder?’

‘I suppose I would.’

‘Then, perhaps you should kill me,’ Carruthers said.

’Are you insane?’

Carruthers gave her a sad smile. ‘The court didn’t think so.’

‘Then, why would you want me to kill you?’

‘Because I’m a doctor. If I die in prison, old and decrepit, I’ll be of no use to anyone and a burden on the world. End my life now and my body can be harvested to save dozens more lives.’

She shook her head and continued to fiddle with the dialysis machine. ‘I can’t kill you.’

‘Then, leave me alone. Just for a few minutes. And don’t resuscitate me. Can you do that for me?’

Sally nodded. ‘I think so. Goodbye, Dr Carruthers.’

N
urse Sally returned five minutes later to find Carruthers slumped over unconscious and bleeding out.

Carruthers had taken his last few moments to slit his wrists using the needle with which she had found his vein, and then daub a farewell message on the wall with his blood:
You’re Welcome
.

He wasn’t gone yet. Sally glanced at her watch. Another five minutes ought to do the trick.