"Take a look."
I showed the wound, which even I had to admit was stitched up remarkably well, almost as if by a ghost.
Even though it was a surgery conducted in a lecture hall, and anyone could walk in, it was unlikely that anyone had gotten a proper look at the surgical scene.
The officer had been standing at the back of the lecture hall, not in the front, so this must have been his first time seeing something like this.
"Wow."
His face had turned pale, as if he had seen a ghost.
I did a good job, didn't I?
Of course, this doesn't mean the patient will come back to life, but still...
Anyway, the important thing now isn't that. The patient needs to rest, and we should just provide the necessary information, right?
So, I started rambling on.
"As you can see, the width of the wound isn't that narrow."
"Hmm. That's true. It's about..."
"4 cm... no, wait. About three fingers wide?"
"Right, right. You keep using old-fashioned terms. Anyway, about three fingers wide. So? Isn't this something you can tell just by looking?"
If you could tell just by looking, why were you so confused earlier?
Wait, now that I think about it, this is really frustrating.
At first, you thought the patient was dead, right?
The fact that you've decided to only ask the patient for information means you've essentially given up on catching the culprit.
This isn't just speculation...
'Well... I did hear that most cases go unsolved.'
When I first heard from Liston about unsolved cases, I wondered why the police even existed.
Of course, they're quite effective at preventing violent incidents or solving murders involving high-profile individuals, but still...
Is this why Sherlock Holmes became so popular?
The public must have been so desperate to catch criminals that his stories became a huge hit.
"Yes, that's right. But when I looked inside, the wound didn't go very deep."
Of course, I was playing the typical strong-weak-weak-strong card when dealing with authority, saying things I didn't really mean.
Maybe things will change once I rise through the ranks, but...
Who knows?
It's not like that's going to happen anytime soon, right?
"It didn't go deep? So it was a short blade?"
"How common is a short blade with this kind of width?"
"Ah... that's true."
"At least this long."
I stretched out my palm to show the length.
Then, I placed it next to the patient's abdomen.
If the blade had gone all the way in, the patient would be dead.
A 20 cm blade would usually kill someone.
Of course, if the person had a lot of body fat, it might be different, but how many laborers in London have that much body fat?
They eat the strangest food and work grueling jobs.
"Ah... so...?"
"He didn't stab all the way. He's a novice. Someone who's never handled a knife before. Plus, there are actually two wounds... this one only cut the skin."
"Skin, you mean...?"
"The skin of the abdomen. It barely went in, maybe a centimeter at most."
"Ah, I see. That makes sense. That's a very plausible analysis."
The officer looked genuinely impressed.
He shouldn't be surprised by something like this...
It's worrying.
'I should absolutely... not walk around alone at night.'
It's not like there's no reason for it. London seems to be filling up with more and more vagrants.
They're vagrants in name, but given the chance, they could turn into robbers at any moment.
That's just how this era is.
No, even farmers would slit your throat if they thought you had some money!
Maybe the reason Liston has been spending so much money lately isn't because of the operating room, but because he's been cutting off limbs somewhere else...
'No, that's not it.'
My trust in the police had already hit rock bottom, and my mind was wandering, but I managed to pull myself together and pointed to the patient's foot.
"Here... right?"
It seemed like he hadn't even thought to look there.
Well, it's not like...
I was the same.
When I first saw a trauma patient, I didn't think of it either.
"Yes. Imagine someone chasing you with a knife, and you're unarmed. What would you do first?"
"Run away. Right?"
"Exactly. You'd run. But look around here... it's a place full of sewage... wouldn't something have splashed onto your legs?"
At my words, Alfred and Colin, who had run over from that very street, looked down at their pants.
They were a mess.
The officer had also run a bit, so something must have splashed, but since he was wearing leather boots, he was mostly unharmed.
"But it's clean here, right? So this means..."
"The attacker didn't chase him from outside. This patient was attacked at home."
"Wow. That makes sense!"
It was Detective Park, I think.
Since we kept running into each other at the trauma center, we had the chance to chat about various things while waiting for the patient to regain consciousness.
If you ask whether a doctor should be chatting instead of focusing on the patient, I'd have no defense... but it's not like we had no time at all.
The problem was that we didn't have enough time to go anywhere else.
'Thank you... Even if I'm not a detective here, I can still play the part.'
That guy was probably in a similar situation to me, which is why he acted that way...
"Now, look at his hands."
"His hands this time?"
I had learned quite a bit.
"Yes. His hands are clean, right?"
"Aren't they supposed to be?"
"No. Think again. A crazy person comes at you with a knife, and you're unarmed. You can't run. You're either at home or in a dead end. What would you do?"
"Hmm... Oh! Are you insane?"
As the officer hesitated, Liston, standing beside me, made a motion as if to strike the officer with his knife.
Of course, it wasn't unsheathed, but still...
Not just the officer, but everyone in the room looked at him as if he were crazy.
It might have been my imagination, but I think even the patient opened his eyes for a moment.
"His hands are up now."
Liston, being used to this kind of attention, just chuckled.
No, perhaps it's better to say he was unfazed...
Anyway...
This actually helped.
"Yes. He raised his hands, right? It's instinctive to defend yourself."
"Ah... so."
"But the person stabbing him wouldn't have stopped just because of that... so his hands should have been injured."
"But they're clean. What's going on? Did he stab himself?"
Wow.
This time, it got a bit dangerous.
That was such a stupid thing to say...
I almost hit him.
Common sense would tell you that if he had stabbed himself, the weapon would still be there!
And since we're always hearing about harakiri and such from Japan, we tend to think of stabbing oneself as something easy, but in reality, it's not something you can do in your right mind.
"Well... then maybe he was holding the knife or it was nearby? And he couldn't have washed his hands, so they shouldn't be this clean."
"Ah, I see."
"Think about it. What if someone he knew suddenly stabbed him? Then he might not have been able to defend himself."
"Ah... someone he knew...?"
"Yes. Someone he knew."
"Like this."
I used my finger to mimic stabbing the officer in the stomach during our conversation.
As expected, he was completely unprepared, and the officer alternated between looking at his stomach and his hand, which was frozen in mid-air, before clapping.
"That makes sense! So the culprit is someone he knows!"
"That's highly likely."
"Right, right! Good! We can catch him now! Well done! Keep up the good work!"
The officer laughed heartily and ran out.
As I watched him leave, I once again vowed not to walk around alone at night.
Then, as I was about to check on the patient, Liston spoke up.
He had his finger on the patient's nose.
"He's breathing well. Good job. You're really amazing."
"You're too kind. It's all thanks to your teaching."
"I don't know how you learned what I didn't teach you, but I appreciate you saying that."
Lately, he's been giving me that suspicious look from time to time, and it flashed across his face again before he continued.
"By the way..."
He looked a bit concerned.
I wondered why.
"We saved his life, which is good, but... where did you get the corpse?"
"Ah."
Right.
We weren't there to save lives...
We were there to retrieve a corpse.
Of course, the purpose of retrieving the corpse was to teach other surgeons and save more lives in the future, but...
Anyway, we needed a corpse right now.
"Um... did you say you needed a corpse?"
"Huh?"
As we exchanged worried glances, the officer who had stayed behind to check on the patient's condition spoke up.
He clearly looked like he was of a lower rank, but since he was an officer, it was worth listening to him.
"A corpse?"
"Yes. A corpse... not all of them are innocent victims, right?"
I wasn't sure what he was getting at.
His nose was a bit red, like he enjoyed drinking, which made me even more suspicious.
In this era, there's no shortage of people who aren't in their right mind.
"What do you mean?"
Liston, who hates beating around the bush, stepped in first.
He's already big and intimidating, and earlier he even brandished a knife.
Even if he's a police officer, he wouldn't dare ignore Liston.
"Well, there are prisoners, right?"
"Prisoners...? No... I'm not saying we should kill someone here."
He got a bit carried away, but is Liston really that much of a scumbag?
No, he's not.
"No, no. That's not what I meant. There are... death row inmates, right?"
"Ah."
"A lot of them die."
"We need ten, will that many die?"
"Uh... by when?"
"Next week."
"Ah."
Next week?
I saw it.
The officer's mouth.
Yeah, that's a lot, isn't it?
No matter how many death row inmates there are...
"It might be possible."
"Huh?"
"It might be possible. We just need to speed things up."
"Speed things up...? That's a bit... Isn't that killing someone who could live longer?"
"They're going to die anyway. They're all murderers and rapists."
"Well, that changes things."
Not all murderers deserve to die.
But from what I've seen of the police lately...
How many times have they been caught?
How many times have they done it...?
Frankly, is there CCTV or black boxes?
Finding witnesses is incredibly difficult because everyone's too busy trying to survive and won't cooperate.
You can't even blame them because even if they do cooperate, there's nothing in it for them.
If they don't get retaliated against, that's already a win.
"So, instead of doing this, why don't I give you the schedule, and you can pick them up at the scene."
Right.
That's it.
They're people who deserve to die.
But do we really need to go to the scene...?
As I was thinking that, Liston grabbed his hand.
"Alright. But... can we change the method?"
"Method?"
"We need the corpses for surgical practice, so we can't have any neck injuries."
"Ah... so hanging is out of the question?"
"Right."
"Uh... I'll talk to the higher-ups about it. We've already received a lot of help from the doctor, so we'll cooperate with anything. Today as well."
At the officer's words, Liston chuckled.
Me?
I was...
'Then how exactly are they going to execute them...?'
I started to feel uneasy.