Page 110 of First Blood

There were two other interpretations of the rhyme and neither of them were dark in origin, unlike the others the killer had used.

His gut was saying that the murderer was unlikely to change his MO now for convenience. The darkness behind the rhymes had been consistent throughout: the killer wasn’t making the murder fit the wording of the nursery thyme. Though he’d looked into what possible darker meaning could lie behind the rhyme and behind Doctor Foster, he simply hadn’t been able to find anything sinister.

‘Cheer up, Dawson,’ Stacey said, still breathless with excitement and anticipation.

‘You wanna check the doctor’s call-out for me?’ he asked.

‘Still trying to get folks to do your work for you?’ she said, raising one eyebrow.

He considered every possible response, in every possible tone and then settled on the truth.

‘Stacey, I could do with your help.’

She hesitated and he wasn’t sure he blamed her.

‘Okey dokey,’ she said, simply.

He returned to the internet and carried on looking for nursery rhymes containing the word ‘Doctor’.

The next listing in his search came from ‘An Apple a Day’.

He read through the rhyme.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Apple in the morning, Doctor’s warning.

Roast apple at night, Starves the Doctor outright.

Eat an apple at bed, knock the Doctor on the head.

Three each day, seven days a week, ruddy apple, ruddy cheek.

He read it again and then learned that it was suspected of being parental propaganda to get children to eat their greens.

But it really hailed from the sixteenth century and a deep distrust of doctors, advising they should not be trusted.

Something stirred inside his stomach. A memory. A snippet he’d heard just recently on the news or in a newspaper.

He ran a search on doctors and trust and got nothing.

He ran a second search on doctors and malpractice suits and found what he was looking for.

He read the half-page article twice and then without hesitation he reached for the phone.

Chapter One Hundred Two

‘Dawson, what the hell are you talking about?’ Kim asked, putting her mobile on loudspeaker so Bryant could hear. They were approximately two miles from the target area in Romsley.

‘I think you’re going to the wrong place,’ he urged.

‘The two words that start that sentence do not convince me to change my mind,’ she snapped. Her adrenaline was running high as they got closer to Gloucester Street.

‘Please, just hear me out. So far our killer has left clues that allude to nursery rhymes that have a darker meaning behind them. There’s no darker meaning I can find anywhere behind the “Doctor Foster” rhyme. It’s about some guy falling off a horse into some water and never going back there again. It doesn’t make sense for him to change his pattern now.’

A mile and a half.

‘Dawson, I think we’re going to stick—’