Whacked in Whitechapel (A Cozy Mystery) (Cassie Coburn Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  I nodded in agreement as I looked around the room. “You’re right though. Why take the body that far away from where he murdered her? I mean, there’s a ton of closets, fridges and stuff like that around here where a body could presumably be hidden for days without noticing.”

  Before Violet got a chance to answer, however, the door opened once more and DCI Williams returned, along with one of the constables I recognized from the ward where the body was found, and a short Asian woman along with a tall, thin man, both wearing white lab coats. The man had a hooked nose and greasy black hair. However, despite his appearance, when he finally spoke, his voice was soft and friendly.

  “Hello,” he said, stepping forward. “I am the head of this laboratory. Doctor Edmund Neuwirth.”

  “Doctor Neuwirth,” Violet said, “I need to know if anything is missing from this laboratory.”

  “Of course,” he said, nodding. The woman behind him noiselessly made her way to a cabinet, from which she took out a file which she placed on a table, and began going through the contents of the lab.

  “What is it that you keep in here, in general?” Violet asked the doctor, who looked around nervously.

  “This is a research area. We keep a variety of chemicals and equipment here, and also samples of a number of diseases on which we do studies.”

  “Excuse me, miss,” Violet asked the woman, who looked up at her questioningly. “Could you please tell me what it is that is kept in this part of the room in particular?”

  “Of course,” the woman replied, rushing over with her file. She looked at the numbers on the corner of the doors near where Violet was standing, and then ran a finger down her list.

  “The cupboards contain… extra microscopes, as well as microscope equipment. Slides, slide holders, lenses, extra parts—”

  “And the refrigerators beneath?” Violet interrupted.

  The woman scanned some more, and suddenly her finger paused on a single line and her face went white.

  “What is it?” I asked, the woman looking toward Doctor Neuwirth.

  “It’s the Ebola samples,” she said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. Violet immediately leaned down and opened one of the fridge doors in front of our crime scene. Everyone in the room seemed to all pile around as we peered into the fridge. It was completely empty.

  “I’m no doctor, but even I know that can’t be a good thing,” DCI Williams said quietly.

  “How could this have happened?” Doctor Neuwirth asked, his face blanching.

  “I’ll make sure it hasn’t been moved elsewhere,” the other woman said, quickly checking all of the other fridges. I didn’t bother holding my breath. There had been samples of Ebola kept in this room, and now they were gone.

  “Now we know why he didn’t want us to find this crime scene,” I told Violet, who nodded grimly.

  “Yes. There is now, somewhere in London, a murderer with Ebola available to them.” She turned to me.

  “What do you know about Ebola?”

  “Excuse me,” Doctor Neuwirth said. “I’m the head of the microbiological research department here at Barts and The London.”

  “Yes, and I have read many of your published articles, Doctor Neuwirth. I find many of your findings, particularly those concerning the potential genetic factor in the choleric infection rate to be based on more conjecture than fact.” The man opened his mouth to protest, but Violet put up her hand. “For goodness sake someone has stolen vials of the Ebola virus, I believe that is slightly more important than your bruised ego at the moment. Cassie, tell me everything you know about Ebola.”

  Luckily, when the Ebola virus had a major outbreak in Western Africa in 2014, I was already working at a hospital. We had initial extra training on the virus as soon as it was declared an epidemic, and when a Liberian man visiting Texas was diagnosed on American soil, we got even more training on the disease and how to treat it.

  “It was discovered in the seventies in Central Africa, but the recent outbreak was the first actual epidemic. It’s extremely contagious, but not airborne. The disease can be transmitted via direct contact with either the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person presenting with symptoms, or by contact of objects contaminated with their bodily fluids. It is also transmittable sexually. However, the lack of infrastructure, training and cultural differences made up a lot of the reason why the Ebola outbreak reached the epidemic stages in West Africa.”

  “Yes, there was a nurse brought back to England who had it, if I remember correctly,” Violet mused. “She was cured and no one else in this country caught the disease. What about the potential for weaponization of the disease?”

  I shrugged. “Unfortunately, they didn’t really tell us much about that. We mostly just learned about preventing outbreaks, and treatment of infected patients.”

  Doctor Neuwirth cleared his throat. “I can help with that,” he declared pompously, and I had to hide a smile. He evidently took Violet’s slight against him quite personally. “It would be quite difficult, and costly, to weaponize the Ebola virus. Once patients are contained in western societies, the risk of infection reduces significantly. They could create a small bomblet, that would perhaps infect people within thirty feet of them, or infect suicide bombers who leave their infected bodily fluids on as many door handles, railings and other commonly touched public areas as possible. The virus could also be genetically modified to spread more easily, but that would be the most difficult option.”

  “And regardless of the outcome in terms of human lives, the panic caused by any of those options, especially the first two, would be catastrophic,” Violet muttered, almost to herself. She turned to DCI Williams. “I do not believe I am overreacting when I tell you that you are looking for terrorists.”

  This was definitely not good.

  Chapter 3

  We were getting ready to leave the room when Violet suddenly turned to face Doctor Neuwirth.

  “Why did this hospital have vials of the virus to begin with?” she asked. “And how many were there?”

  Neuwirth sighed. DCI Williams gave him a look. “If you so much as consider lying to Miss Despuis right now, I will ensure you spend time in prison for perverting the course of justice,” he warned.

  “We were not supposed to have it long,” Doctor Neuwirth admitted. “Three, four days. There was a problem at the European Centre for Disease Prevention two days ago. A number of their refrigeration units failed, and they wanted us to store the vials for a few days while they waited for a replacement part. We have done this for them in the past, and it has never gone badly. Because our lab is locked securely, only authorized scientists are allowed access.”

  “So regular nursing staff should never be able to get in here?” I asked.

  “Regular nursing staff should have never even known we had the virus,” he replied. “There were only a handful of people who knew about this.”

  “I’m going to need a list of their names from you, now,” DCI Williams ordered, handing the doctor a pen and his notebook. The doctor nodded and began to write.

  “Send me that list when you have finished,” Violet told DCI Williams. “I will be in touch.”

  DCI Williams nodded and I followed Violet out of the room.

  “Now what do we do?”

  “Now we find out how the nurse discovered there was Ebola in the hospital, and how she got into the room.”

  “Brianne does her studies here, maybe she knows the nurse,” I offered.

  “Good. Ask her if she knows who the nurse was closest to, as well.” I sent Brianne a quick text–leaving out the part about Ebola virus possibly being in the hands of terrorists–and found out that she was due for a break.

  “She’ll meet us in the cafeteria in five minutes,” I told Violet.

  “Good, parfait,” Violet said, striding off in that direction.

  My stomach grumbled with hunger, but I wasn’t near famished enough to brave the food at the hospital cafeteria. I knew Viol
et wouldn’t eat any of it either–if it wasn’t organic and everything-free Violet was loathe to eat it. Instead, we found an empty table in the corner and sat in the plastic chairs. Brianne came down and met us a few minutes later.

  “G’day,” she said, slipping into one of the chairs next to us and throwing her head back. “What a crazy day, hey?”

  Brianne was short, only a little over five feet tall, with red hair and a friendly face. She was Australian, studying for her medical degree in London. We’d become friends after meeting at Chipotle, where she worked part time.

  “It certainly has. You have heard by now of the nurse who was killed, Anita Turner?” Violet asked, and Brianne nodded, her face turning somber.

  “Of course. It’s such a huge tragedy. That poor woman.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  Brianne shook her head slowly. “No, I wouldn’t say well. I definitely knew her. She was pretty nice, I thought.”

  “Who in the hospital was she closest to?”

  “There were a few nurses, I think,” Brianne said after a moment’s thought. “I saw her and Jasmin Kattan leaving work together a few times. I got the feeling they hung out together a fair bit.”

  Violet’s phone suddenly buzzed on the table, and she picked it up and unlocked it. “Do you know whether Anita Turner spent time with any of these people?” Violet asked, handing Brianne the phone. She looked at the list for a few minutes, then shook her head.

  “No, I don’t recognize any of those names. Who are they?”

  “They are the people who worked downstairs, in one of the pathology laboratories.” Violet handed me the phone when Brianne gave it back to her, and I looked at the list. Doctor Neuwirth had included himself, and there were seven other names below. Doctor Amelia Chu, Doctor Peter Hart, Doctor Andrew Collins, Doctor Priya Singh, Doctor Heather Brown, Doctor Rupert Jones and Doctor David Rossberg.

  “Ah, well we basically never get to see those people,” Brianne explained. “They generally don’t spend much time up here in the regular hospital. I mean, I can’t say for certain, but I can’t really see how Anita would have managed to spend much time with any of them.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us about Anita Turner?” Violet asked. “It is very, very important.”

  Brianne thought for a moment. “You know, there is one thing. It’s most likely nothing, but maybe a week ago I had to go to the nurses’ station to get something, and saw Anita there. I thought she was crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she said nothing. I didn’t really think any more of it.”

  “One week ago,” Violet said. “Do you remember the exact date?”

  Brianne squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to remember. “Yes,” she replied finally. “It had to have been the twelfth, last Monday. It was the day I tried to take blood from a twelve-year-old with a phobia of needles and he vomited all over me. Why, is it important?”

  I burst out laughing at Brianne’s story, but Violet simply nodded slowly. “I do not yet know what is important and what is not. At this point, I am simply gathering as much data as possible. It would be dangerous to decide what is important and what is not this early in an investigation. Thank you Brianne, you have been very helpful.”

  Brianne nodded and got up. “I’ll text you later,” she told me before waving goodbye and heading back to the wards.

  I looked at Violet. “So now we find Jasmin Kattan?” I asked. She nodded in reply.

  “Yes. Yes, that is our next stop. There are eight people on the list that DCI Williams was given by Doctor Neuwirth. Eight people who knew that there was Ebola in this hospital, including Doctor Neuwirth himself.”

  “Well that should make it pretty easy then, shouldn’t it?”

  Violet smiled ruefully. “If every case was always as easy as it seemed on the surface, I would have nothing to interest me. Perhaps you are correct, but also perhaps not. There is always human error to consider.”

  “I hope I’m right,” I replied. “You can have fun trying to solve cases that just involve plain old murder, but when there’s Ebola virus on the loose, I’d rather get this case over and done with as soon as possible.”

  Violet just smiled at me in reply.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean you’d rather have a good puzzle to solve than getting a biological agent off the streets,” I told her, and Violet simply shrugged in reply.

  “Most terrorists, they are imbéciles. In many cases of even successful attacks, with a few strategic changes they could have caused far more damage than they actually did. There are exceptions, of course. But I do not believe that if the intention of the Ebola thieves is to use the virus for terrorism purposes that we will fail. Regardless of the difficulty of the case, we will solve it.”

  “Well I just want us to solve it before we find ourselves with hundreds, or even thousands of people with diarrhea and bleeding from their eyes.”

  “We will. Do not worry. You have seen me work before, and I have not failed. I will not fail this time, either.”

  I wished I could share Violet’s unwavering confidence, but the fact of the matter was this case was no longer about finding a potential murderer. This was about stopping a potential terrorist. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.

  A few minutes later we were interviewing Jasmin Kattan, in the back room of the nurses’ station in the pediatrics department. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and she played with her hands a lot, as though to distract her from the fact that she’d just learned her best friend had been killed.

  “Anita was the best person, just, the best friend you could ever hope for,” Jasmin told us eventually, looking at us through big brown eyes. A few errant strands of black hair had escaped her hijab.

  “Was she in a relationship with anyone?” Violet asked softly.

  “You know, she was,” Jasmin said. “But she didn’t like to talk about him. I’m afraid I don’t know much about her boyfriend at all. They’d been together about six months. Really the only thing she told me was his name: Ed.”

  I frowned. Ed didn’t match any of the names on the list we’d been given by Doctor Neuwirth of people who knew about the disease being in the hospital.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Ed? Please, it’s important, it might help us figure out who killed Anita,” Violet told her.

  “I wish I could help you, but she was so secretive about him,” Jasmin replied. “I have a feeling he was older than her though. I can’t say for sure. Just a feeling I got. I don’t even know how they met.”

  “What kind of person was Anita?” Violet asked next.

  “Oh, she was lovely. A beautiful person, inside and out. And she was bright, too, you know. She knew so much about nursing, and medicine. She had applied to UCL Medical School here in London. She was going to become a doctor. She loved nursing, but she was so ambitious. Her parents died when she was little, and she was raised by her grandmother. She was so studious. We were in nursing school together, and she never had time for things like boys. She was always studying, always working. In some ways, I always thought she was a little bit immature. Maybe that’s why I feel like her boyfriend is older than her. But oh, she was really so lovely. Whenever anyone needed a shoulder to cry on, she was there. I’m really going to miss her.”

  Jasmin buried her face in her hands as tears dripped down her face. I put a comforting hand on Jasmin’s shoulder, and she looked up and smiled at me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I deal with death every day. And yet, I never imagined that Annie…” Her voice trailed off into nothing.

  “It is understandable, of course,” Violet told her. “And I thank you for answering my questions. It may very well help lead us toward finding her murderer.”

  “Please, do contact me anytime if you need any more help,” Jasmin implored. “I want you to find her killer. Anything you need. Please.”

  “Thank you,” I told Jasmin, as Violet and I left the nurses’ station.<
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  “Where are we going now?” I asked. Violet smiled.

  “Where would you go, if you were looking for the murderer?”

  I thought about it for a minute. If there was one thing London had a lot more of than America, it was security cameras. Everyone in America liked to talk about how Big Brother was taking over, but trust me, they had absolutely nothing on England. I could practically guarantee that almost every inch of this hospital was covered in CCTV cameras.

  “Security room,” I answered, and I got an appreciative nod from Violet.

  “You are improving at thinking, Cassie.”

  Chapter 4

  Five minutes later we were in the security office of the hospital. Violet was sitting casually in a plastic chair at the back of the room while DCI Williams, who we met in the hall on the way, and I stood in front of a giant control center. Grant Woods, the head of security at the hospital, joined us there as well.

  “Right,” Grant said as he tapped away on a touch screen computer embedded into the panel. “What would you like to see?”

  “The inside of the pathology laboratory in the basement, to start,” DCI Williams said.

  “There were no cameras in that room,” Violet said from her spot in the chair at the back, and DCI Williams frowned.

  “Just because you didn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there.”

  “Begging your pardon but she’s right,” Grant said. “There are cameras in the hallway, but there aren’t any in the laboratories.”

  “Well, then let’s see the hallway camera then,” DCI said, trying to hide his annoyance. Grant nodded and typed something quickly into his computer. The large TV screen against the far wall was instantly illuminated with relatively high quality footage–it certainly wasn’t high definition, but it also wasn’t the grainy footage from your standard gas station camera.