The Samsara Project, David Burgess [most popular ebook readers txt] 📗

charge here please?” asked the first paramedic.
“I can help you,” replied Sergeant Kenyon.
“Have you got one gunshot victim or two, the reports we had were not very clear?”
“There’s one gunshot victim, a female, just over there. She’s not showing any obvious vital signs but you can check her anyway. Over there, male, looks like a head injury. And you are?”
“Russell,” replied the paramedic, pointing to his name embroidered over the top left hand pocket of his green coveralls. “I’ll check on the female first.” Russell was carrying a black case that he had brought out of the cab with him. He picked up Tracy’s hand, feeling for a pulse in the process. He laid her hand gently back down onto the ground then, with two fingers, felt her neck, again checking for a pulse. “I’ve got a very faint pulse over here,” he shouted to the assistant. Prep the pod for gunshot trauma and then bring the gurney over here, we’ve got to move fast.”
Paramedic two started to hang drips and various lines from the patient area of the ambulance. It was a well rehearsed procedure and took only a minute to complete. He then pushed the patient trolley or gurney as far as he could towards Tracy. The gurney was not designed to travel over rough ground so he was not able to get it next to her. The two paramedics would have to carry Tracy about twenty yards. Russell was inserting two shunts into Tracy’s arm, ready to receive the intravenous drips once she was safely inside the ambulance.
A plain clothes officer approached Russell, “DI Baxter, Southern Counties CID, do you think she’s likely to survive?”
“Hard to tell detective Inspector, her pulse is very weak, blood pressure has almost dropped of the scale but where there’s life there’s hope, as they say. We need to move her now though. Is that OK with you?”
“Of course, keep me informed of her progress please. It obviously has a bearing on the case. Do you need any of my men to help you?”
“Thanks Detective Inspector but we should be OK. Appreciate the offer thought.”
The two paramedics carried Tracy to the trolley, placed her gently on it and then wheeled her over to the ambulance. Within two minutes she was inside, made secure, hooked up to the intravenous drips and on her way to the nearest available trauma centre.
DI Baxter was about to start questioning John, who was now able to talk and had about eighty percent movement back in his limbs. When there was a whooping sound from the road. A Southern Counties paramedic ambulance pulled up. Two paramedics jumped out and jogged towards the DI. “Are you in charge?” asked the first paramedic, “We’ve been called out to a possible shooting.”
“Sorry, you’re too late,” replied DI Baxter, “You’re colleagues have already taken the victim to a local trauma centre.”
“What colleagues?” replied the paramedic with a rather confused look on his face.
“I assume the ones your control sent here,” answered DI Baxter.
The first paramedic took out his portable radio and contacted ambulance control. After a brief conversation he looked perplexed.
“What’s the mix up?” asked DI Baxter.
“There is no mix up sir. We are the only crew that has been dispatched here. I have no idea who picked up your gunshot victim but ‘Southern Counties HNS Ambulance Trust’ has no knowledge of it what so ever. It looks as though someone has walked into your crime scene and taken your victim from under your noses.”
DI Baxter looked mortified. “Did anyone get the number of that ambulance?” he shouted. No one had. “What direction did it go? We’ve got half the Southern Counties Police Force here; someone must know what way it went.” Again no one replied.
John could hear the commotion going on around him. Andrew’s words came back to him, ‘When you want to hide, hide in the open. Blend in, that way no one will see you.’ At the scene of a shooting there are certain things everyone expects to see. Top of their list would be the presence of Police and Ambulance crews. Who ever had just spirited away Tracy was very cool and professional. But who? John reasoned that it would not be the same people who had tried to kill her. Why try to kill her then come back for her. If that’s what they had wanted then they could have just taken her in the first place. One thing was certain in John’s mind right now, he was about to be framed for the shooting, and possible murder, of Tracy Rae and he had no idea how he would ever be able to make anyone believe he was innocent.

* * * *

DCS Hughes walked into the cafeteria, he saw Andrew and Geoffrey sitting at a table over to his left. Andrew acknowledged the detective and pointed to a vacant seat at their table. DCH Hughes nodded back. “Let’s hope he has some good news about Pat,” said Geoffrey.
“I’m sure if it was bad news of any kind he’d have come straight over to us.”
“I suppose your right, I just feel helpless sat here doing nothing. Any word from John yet?”
“Nothing yet,” Andrew replied.
DCS Hughes placed his cup of coffee and a bacon roll and a Danish pastry on the table. “I’ve yet to master the fine art of healthy eating,” he said jokingly. “I’m told though that’s the lot of a policeman, sat in a car all day, drinking coffee eating donuts.”
“That’s just what the public think though,” said Geoffrey, “I blame the American cop shows. You never see a policeman in one of those shows unless they have a large Styrofoam cup of coffee in their hands, even at a crime scene.” He emphasised the words ‘crime scene.’
DCS Hughes nodded.
Geoffrey continued, “It not as if it is anything like real life. In real life you’d be sat around a table drinking coffee and eating a bacon bap followed by a rather tasty looking Apple Danish. I blame the writers myself.”
“Touché,” replied DCS Hughes. “Pat is making good progress upstairs, I asked the nurse about visiting and she says it should be OK after the doctors have made their rounds in about an hour’s time.”
“That’s great news,” said Andrew, his spirits visibly lifted.
“It is,” replied DCS Hughes, “I thought that the hour would give us the chance to have a chat. I have a theory that Pat was targeted last night because of something he knew, or because of something his attackers thought he knew and whoever attacked him wanted that information so badly they were prepared to pump whatever drugs they needed into him to get it. These drugs are amongst the most controlled in the country. I checked. It is so controlled that even the police aren’t allowed access to it. So, what is it that Pat knows that would provoke such an attack?”
“We were thinking the same thing,” replied Andrew.
“I bet you were,” said DCS Hughes. “Anyway, I was waiting to interview Pat to try and find out what this is all about when it occurred to me. Whatever Pat knows, so do you two, and as neither of you have been pumped full of nasty mind bending drugs and you both have a good hour to kill I thought you might like (at this point his voice started to rise) to give me some idea as to what is going on.”
A couple on the next table took a glance in DCS Hughes direction. He looked back at them, “Police brutality in action,” he said in their direction.
“We don’t have any hard facts or any evidence about anything just now,” answered Geoffrey, “all we have is a theory and that is so ‘off the wall’ I can’t believe anyone would have the slightest interest in it, all that happened is John was looking into the Suzie Reeves murder. I helped by doing background checks on the victim. There were a few inconsistencies, we dug a bit more and then everything started to go a bit crazy. One thing led to another and here we are now.”
DCS Hughes had finished his bap and was half way through his Apple Danish, he continued. “Parts of your theory affect me and don’t forget my office was bugged because John was coming to see me. I know where the bugs came from, or at least what general operational area they came from. So far I have never heard your theory and I want to, from start to finish. Leave nothing out. Not even the smallest detail.”
There was silence, then DCS Hughes looked at the two men “I’m listening, feel free to start whenever.”
Andrew and Geoffrey looked at each other, shrugged and started to tell the whole story to DCS Hughes. They left nothing out, they told him about their theory, the circumstances behind their thinking and how it took shape as events around them had unfolded. How, as fantastic and impossible as the theory sounded it was the only thing that made any sense.
“I’m lost for words,” said DCS Hughes, “I thought in my many years as a serving police officer that I had heard it all. This theory as you call it is just beyond belief. It’s pure science fiction.”
“Everything you’re thinking and feeling right now is perfectly normal, every one of us though and felt the same,” said Geoffrey.
“You have to open your mind to the possibility that this has happened,” continued Andrew.
Geoffrey agreed and continued, “You’re a police officer, and a high ranking one at that. Look at the evidence. The DNA results, the bugging, both victims have a limited checkable past, someone wanting to keep us quiet about our theory, Pat’s interrogation last night, truth drugs even the bugging of your office and a kidnapped secretary. DCS Hughes, we still have no idea why our theory has caused all of this to happen, we just know it has. That proves to us that we have set off some very serious alarm bells somewhere. Whoever it is that is hearing those bells went after Pat last night. They’ve been after us almost from day one and they are still out there and still after us. Through no fault of his own Pat would have told them everything he knew and we have no idea what that will make them do next.”
“Let’s for one minute assume I go along with your theory,” said DCS Hughes. “When exactly did everything start getting dangerous for you? What happened on ‘day one’ to trigger this response?”
They thought for a moment, piecing together in their heads the sequence of events that had lead up last night. Andrew, very softly, spoke, “DNA, it was only after the DNA confirmed that Suzie’s killer had the same DNA as Jack the Ripper. That’s when it started.”
”Who would know about the DNA though?” asked DCS Hughes.
It was now Geoffrey’s to speculate, “Peter, John’s brother in law. It was Peter who carried out the tests. Or at least his lab, Peter has to be involved.”
“Do you know if John stayed at the lab while the tests were carried out?”
“No, I know he didn’t,” replied Andrew, “he was telling me about looking around some of the sights then going back to get the results.”
“That’s where I’d start then,” said DCS Hughes, “I guarantee that something happened, or someone did something during the DNA test that acted as a trigger.”
“I’ll look into it,” said Geoffrey.
“Be very discrete though,” said DCS Hughes, “if Peter, or his lab is the trigger to all of this then don’t increase the stakes any further, better to