The Art of Murder

Chapter 46

The London Hospital, Thursday 29 January, 9.14 a.m. It was a tiny explosion, barely enough to shake the bottles and boxes from the shelves inside the small room, but sufficient to set off the alarms and to send a plume of black smoke through the half-open door into the corridor. And it had taken no more than ten minutes to arrange: a short walk along the corridor disguised in an orderly's green plastic overalls, and then five paces past the door leading to Intensive Care. The chemicals were all there in the cleaner's storeroom – sulphuric acid, bleach and floor cleaner. Add to these some nail varnish remover, a simple pre-made circuit improvised from a small battery and the flashlight from an old camera, and… boom!

It worked perfectly. There was a loud thud from inside the store, followed by the high-pitched confusion of smashing glassware and the clatter of falling boxes. The alarm sounded and the corridor began to fill with smoke. The two nurses at the desk situated just inside the Intensive Care Ward ran out, followed a few seconds later by the only attending doctor on the ward. In the confusion, it was a simple matter to slip into the long, narrow room unnoticed.

The first job was to tamper with the alarm. The computer on the ICU sister's desk close to the door purred quietly. A few taps on the keyboard brought up the personal bleeper program. To change three of the parameters was straightforward. A tap on the 'Return' key completed the task.

Gary Townsend lay unconscious. Over the upper half of his body was a perspex canopy. He had three plastic tubes supplying him with different medications. A monitor bleeped and a screen displayed his vital signs. His face was a hideous mess, as though someone had taken a blow torch to a plastic doll's head. His hair had liquefied almost halfway back over his head, leaving random charred clumps. His eyes were shrouded with melted skin and there were deep furrows in his cheeks through which slices of stark white bone could be seen. Patches of diaphanous gauze lay across exposed stretches of the man's forehead and in strips down each side of his neck. He was barely breathing.

The canopy pivoted up on a pair of metal hinges. A quick glance round confirmed no one was coming back from the corridor. The cap of the hypodermic slipped off easily. Finding a vein was a little trickier, but then the needle slid into flesh, the plunger was pushed home and the heroin shot into Townsend's bloodstream. He was dead before the canopy had clicked back into place.

A steady walk back to the door, a turn right away from the scene of the diversion, remembering to look down turning the corner into the corridor covered by CCTV… and the job was done.