Page 115 of First Blood

She shone the torch around the space. Behind the reception desk sat a couple of chairs and a small filing cabinet with the drawers pulled out.

She gasped out loud as something scurried past her right foot and past a metal cupboard marked ‘Incident Post’. It hadn’t taken the local vermin long to move in. A building infested with rats didn’t thrill her, but she wouldn’t let it stop her either.

She turned the torch to the floor onto mauve carpet with random spots. She looked closer and cast the torch in a wider arc. The pattern was too random to make sense.

She leaned down and touched one of the larger droplets and brought her finger to the torch. Damn, the doctor was still bleeding.

Kim found herself hoping the blow had been to the head. She knew the head could bleed profusely from even a minor cut. Many tiny arteries and veins serve the individual muscles and skin on the head and some wounds aren’t life threatening.

She stepped through the double doors shining the torch down on the ground, hoping to follow a blood trail right to the crime scene.

‘Damn it,’ she said, out loud. There was no trail. If the killer had brought the doctor this way he’d realised that the wound was leading anyone straight to them.

She shone the torch around the corridor which appeared to be more like a tunnel curving out of sight. She remembered that the shape and layout of the medical wing had reminded her of a donut. Plastic chairs still lined the walls waiting for customers to attend consultation appointments. Medical warning posters still hung from noticeboards that dotted the wall between doorways.

She shone the light on the direction board to her left.

Arrows pointed to consultation rooms for non-surgical procedures including Botox, fillers, permanent make-up, chemical peels and microdermabrasion, which sounded far too painful not to require a general anaesthetic.

Another arrow pointed to surgical procedures which seemed to include every part of the body with a name.

Where the hell would he have taken his victim? she wondered looking over the rooms and procedures again, and how could she move silently along this corridor with enough speed to save the doctor’s life?

She had the sudden feeling she was running out of time. She was moving stealthily to avoid being detected but by her reckoning there were more than thirty rooms to be checked.

She paused before moving too much further along the corridor. Her current and pressing objective was to save the life of Doctor Lambert. Catching the killer came in a close second.

She looked back towards the double doors and realised that she was doing this all wrong.

Chapter One Hundred Eight

Kim threw open the double doors to the reception with a different plan in her mind.

If her prime objective was to save the doctor’s life, then what she needed was a distraction. She needed to make her presence known and hope that the killer thought the preservation of his own life was more important to him than killing this one man.

It was a gamble she had to take. Running in and out of rooms until she found them would most likely sign Doctor Lambert’s death warrant.

She smashed the end of Bryant’s torch against the lock holding the metal doors of the incident cupboard together.

It took two more attempts for the flimsy lock to break open.

She shone the torch into the space and smiled. Amongst the safety chair, fold-up stretchers, emergency kit and first aid box she found exactly what she was looking for.

Perfect.

Before she reached into the cupboard she took out her phone and called her colleague.

‘Bryant, they’re over here somewhere,’ she called out.

‘Shhh…’ he replied, whispering on her behalf. ‘He’ll hear you.’

‘Yeah, there’s been a change of plan. Just get back over here as quick as you can,’ she said, ending the call.

She stepped back through the double doors into the curving tunnel corridor. She listened keenly first but heard no sound.

She lifted the loudhailer to her mouth and switched it on.

‘This is DI Stone and the place is now surrounded. Come out with your arms in the air.’