‘Bollocks to your sources,’ he grunted. ‘You c’n come off your high horse an’ all.’ He fixed the shrinking youth with a piggy stare. ‘You used to diddle my Nat behind the bike sheds. I know all about you.’
Markham reflected that this was likely true of more than a few acned youths in Bromgrove.
Still, the shaft appeared to have hit its mark. The scrawny journalist dropped his eyes.
‘Okay, so what if I did make a phone call to your lot?’ he said finally, before adding with a touch of defiance, ‘It’s not illegal.’
‘No, Mr Darlington, it’s not,’ Markham said quietly. ‘But with a consultant psychiatrist from the Newman Hospital turning up murdered, we are now taking a keen interest in this tale of disappearing patients.’
Darlington sat down with a defeated air. Markham nodded to Noakes, who promptly appropriated two chairs from adjoining cubicles.
‘There’s prob’ly nothing in it. I was dating this dippy bird from the hospital. Receptionist … secretary … summat like that.’
‘Ah.’ Light began to dawn. Hayley, thought Markham and saw the same conviction reflected in Noakes’s eyes.
‘We’d been watching The Shining an’ were just swapping daft stories – trying to scare each other shitless. We’d had a bit to drink …’
‘Go on,’ said Noakes, not unkindly.
‘Well, she said summat about spooky stuff happening where she worked. I asked what kind of spooky and she said there were patients went into the hospital who never came out … as in no-one ever saw them again … Look, we were a bit out of it … she dared me to ring the cop shop, so I did.’
Darlington squirmed uncomfortably.
‘It was just a bit of a laugh, that’s all.’
He took another long drag of the e-cig. Uppity little git. Noakes’s expression was as eloquent as if he had said the words aloud.
‘There’s always been stories about the Newman.’ The reporter looked hopefully at Markham. ‘I thought it was a load of baloney, but … well, you never know … I made the phone call but that was the end of it, so I figured there was nuffink doing. Me and the bird broke up soon after.’
‘Did your girlfriend say where this story came from?’ Markham raked Darlington with a keen glance.
‘Look, it was a load of moonshine. She just wanted to get a reaction. Showing off, like. That was the thing with Hayley, she liked having secrets and playing games. Made her feel she was more than just a dogsbody, but it was all a big tease.’ He looked at the telephone on his desk as though willing it to ring. ‘I got the feeling she may’ve had a snoop at some paperwork … confidential stuff she didn’t ought to see.’
Minutes from the patients’ council. Or paperwork from the abuse investigation.
‘Was there gossip amongst the hospital staff?’
‘Dunno,’ was the sulky reply.
‘Look, sunshine,’ Noakes got up and loomed over the reporter menacingly in his best impersonation of the Sweeney. ‘We’ve got one dead doc. No face an’ not a lot left down below after the foxes were finished with him.’
Darlington looked as though he might throw up.
‘For Chrissake,’ he said with a note of desperation in his reedy treble. ‘It’s a long time ago.’ Noakes showed no sign of budging. ‘I got the impression it was more like a joke,’ the reporter stammered.
‘A joke,’ Markham repeated stonily.
‘Well,’ beads of sweat were forming along Darlington’s upper lip. ‘Staff banter.’ Clutching at straws, he blurted, ‘Y’know … like Fred an’ Rose West when they told their kids “If you don’t behave, you’ll end up under the patio” … kinda, “look out, the bogeyman’s coming to get you” …’
‘Is this for real?’ Noakes sounded bemused.
‘Straight up. There was some old biddy – one of the volunteers, Linda something – told them to put a sock in it cos of it being garbage and disrespectful to the patients. But the rest of ’em had a laugh now and again.’ He looked from Noakes to Markham and back again. ‘There was no real harm in it,’ he concluded lamely.
Gallows humour, thought Markham. You’d hear much the same in the CID canteen any night of the week.
The DI contemplated Darlington with distaste.
‘Don’t leave Bromgrove any time soon.’
He didn’t raise his voice but there was no mistaking the biting undertone.
‘What a prince.’
Noakes relieved his feelings by kicking Markham’s tyres.
‘Jus’ checking the pressure … there were a few pot holes back there.’
The DI discreetly waited till they were on their way for Noakes to unburden himself.
‘Spotty little nerk. When I think of him makin’ free with our Nat.’
Again, Markham reflected that Natalie Noakes was no doubt prodigal of her favours, given the regularity with which she was spied propping up the bar in Bromgrove’s less salubrious nightclubs. Not that her blindly-doting father saw his offspring as anything other than perfect. ‘Can’t help being popular, can she?’ he bristled at an ill-advised quip from DC Doyle. Since then his colleagues had learned to tread carefully round the subject.
Markham shot Noakes an affectionate sideways glance. The DS appeared positively dapper compared with Pete Darlington, but the combination of beige cords, blue plaid shirt, maroon jacket and bilious mauve tie made it look as though he had dressed in the dark. Currently losing the battle of the bulge – even though he and Muriel were keen ballroom dancers with several trophies to their credit – he struggled to fasten the passenger seatbelt across his portly girth.
Markham waited for the inevitable plea which was not long in coming.
‘How about a bacon sarnie to put us on till elevenses?’ the DS suggested, spotting Greggs on their right as they approached the town centre cul de sac where Bromgrove Council had its offices.
‘Wouldn’t hurt you to skip breakfast, Noakesy,’ the DI commented mildly but drew up nonetheless.
Watching the DS amble happily towards his fast food mecca, Markham thought back over the interview with Darlington.
Unproductive as it was, there was the uneasy feeling of being behind the beat – of having missed something.
Markham’s eyes felt gritty with fatigue, his mind drifting back to last night’s dream, wandering deeper and deeper into the heart of the Newman … until, suddenly, there was Noakes at the car window jiggling a brown paper bag in his face.
‘C’mon, Guv. Grub’s up.’
In fact, the coffee and greasy comfort food gave him a much-needed fillip, while Noakes was in seventh heaven.
‘Their bacon rolls are deffo the best,’ he announced finally.
‘Sausage, bacon and egg in your case.’ Markham smiled indulgently at his subordinate’s sheepish expression. Then his face grew serious again. ‘Right, stir your stumps, Sergeant. We’ll roust Ted Cartwright from wherever he’s lurking, then I want to get back to the Newman.’
The DS looked at him closely. ‘What’s biting you, Guv?’
‘I can’t put my finger on it,’ the DI replied slowly. ‘Just a feeling that something’s wrong …’
Noakes had a healthy respect for his boss’s hunches, so made no further demur and the two men headed towards the ugly cinder block complex in search of the council’s legal services department.
If stonewalling was an Olympic event, then Ted Cartwright would win a gold medal, thought Noakes sourly, as he watched the slimy solicitor parry every one of Markham’s questions with a convenient memory lapse. ‘I can’t quite recall …’ ‘I don’t seem to recollect …’ ‘That escapes me just for the moment …’ A geyser of evasions.
Immoveable force meets immoveable object.
There was something stoat-like about the squat solicitor with his well-cut suit and grey buzz cut gleaming with some rich dressing. Like a well-fed mafioso.
‘Now that the Health Trust and other professional bodies are investigating the Newman’s management practice
s, any issue of—’ here Cartwright injected a note of incredulity, ‘— missing patients is obviously sub judice. That means—’
‘I’m aware of what sub judice means, Mr Cartwright.’ Markham’s voice was deadly as he cut through the legal flannel. ‘This is a murder investigation, and any pertinent information that you possess will therefore be shared.’
‘I’ll need to consult the files to refresh my recollection, Inspector.’ Cartwright’s tongue darted out, lizard-like, to lick thick fleshy lips. ‘Perhaps a memo …’
When in doubt, procrastinate.
‘If it’s not too much trouble.’
As he registered the sarcasm, the solicitor’s eyes narrowed to slits.
Don Corleone, thought Noakes. The guvnor’ll end up sleeping with the fishes at this rate.
‘Chief Superintendent Philip Rees is Gold Commander on the case, Mr Cartwright, and I can fax you a list of personnel.’
What response would Philip Rees’s name elicit?
Something skittered at the back of those ferrety eyes and was gone.
But Markham knew he hadn’t imagined it.
The look of recognition and something else.
Fear?
‘He’s a gangster, that one,’ was Noakes’s verdict as they exited the building.
Gangster, gigolo and all round good-for-nothing, Markham concurred silently.
‘D’you see his mug when you mentioned the Chief Super? Crapping his pants.’
Noakes was plundering the furthest reaches of the vernacular today.
‘Indeed, Sergeant. That got a reaction all right.’ He paused by the car. ‘If Rees is putting the squeeze on Cartwright, then why and how?’ In his mind’s eye he saw again the shifty expression on those saurian features. ‘One thing’s for sure. There’s a connection between those two that goes deeper than local authority business.’
The hard brightness of the winter sky seemed to mock his indecision. ‘Right, Noakes,’ he said, ‘back to the Newman.’
After their excursion outdoors, the hospital felt like a giant greenhouse with its airless, smothering atmosphere. Noakes wrenched at his tie as though it was strangling him.
But on the surface, all was tranquil. Like a torpid mill pond.
A different receptionist was on duty; mousy, deferential and apparently awed to the point of muteness. Markham wondered if she had been warned not to talk to them.
In no time at all, they were through the checks and identification processes.
‘Can you direct us to the intensive care ward, please?’ Markham said firmly, registering with interest the flash of panic in her eyes.
‘I’ll just ring through to Ms Holder, Inspector,’ she said faintly.
‘By all means,’ he responded equably.
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. The sound of Claire Holder’s high heels.
The managing director – clad in a cobalt blue power suit – arrived so quickly, the DI figured there must have been an All Ports Alert out for himself and Noakes.
She seemed nervous, he thought, keeping up a non-stop stream of inconsequential chit-chat as she conducted them along the corridor that he remembered from before … with one subtle difference. The framed photograph that had arrested his attention on their last visit was gone as though it had never hung there. As though the enigmatic landscape with its lonely pavilions and eerie signature had melted into the ether. In its place hung a bold brash piece of modern art – squares and rectangles in clashing primary colours. A Mondrian reproduction by the look of it. Markham decided he didn’t much care for it.
Once through the swing doors, they found themselves blanketed by an even deeper hush, as though in a decompression chamber. The passage was lined on both sides with stout locked doors bisected by louvred panels. A heavily fortified nursing station occupied the far end.
A panopticon with no visible signs of life.
But Markham sensed deranged faces, pressed against the glass panels, leering at himself and Noakes. His skin prickled as though the patients’ stares were so many poisoned darts.
Once at the nursing station, they were greeted by a dark young man of Mediterranean appearance whom Claire Holder introduced as Doctor Lopez. She didn’t bother with the two brawny orderlies who watched impassively with incurious eyes. A middle-aged woman with short blonde hair was similarly beneath her notice.
Ushering them through hermetically sealed glass doors behind the station, Doctor Lopez showed them the comfortably furnished recreation area where a couple of men promenaded ponderously like lethargic giants, ignoring a television that was blaring in the corner. Behind the recreation lounge, Doctor Lopez told them, were the female section and two therapy rooms.
Markham felt his heart rate slow.
No sign of the mysterious operating theatre of his dream.
No gurney.
No gowned figures.
They walked back to the nursing station, Doctor Lopez discoursing amicably on the tilt from custodial to rehabilitative principles in acute cases. Meanwhile, the managing director’s impatient foot-tapping and general demeanour indicated her pressing desire to bring the visit to a close.
Finally, the young doctor came to a halt. ‘Feel free to ask me anything you like, gentlemen.’
‘Actually, Doctor Lopez, I wonder if it would be possible for me to see a patient. Mikey Belcher.’
An invisible signal passed between the doctor and managing director.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible just at the moment, Inspector. Mikey’s had a difficult morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s in seclusion now for his own safety.’
‘Why, what’s he gone and done?’
Up till now, Noakes’s curranty eyes had been like swivelling lenses, paying sharp attention to everything round him. But now they narrowed uncompromisingly on Doctor Lopez’s face as he posed this inconvenient question.
‘Seclusion is only used as a matter of clinical necessity, Sergeant, not as a punishment. It isn’t a question of Mikey having “done” anything, but rather a way for us to find the best way of helping him.’ Doctor Lopez’s manner was emollient, but he had one eye on the managing director whose folded arms suggested access to Belcher was no-go.
As they stood in their awkward huddle, there was a minor commotion behind them. The mousy receptionist stood there twisting her hands.
‘What is it, Moira?’ Claire Holder snapped. ‘For God’s sake, don’t just stand there looking like a stranded guppy fish. Say something.’
‘It’s Hayley,’ she stuttered.
Something clicked in the DI’s brain.
Those words of the erstwhile paramour.
‘She liked having secrets and playing games. Made her feel she was more than just a dogsbody, but it was all a big tease.’
Markham felt the cold clutch of anxiety at his heart.
‘What about Hayley?’ he said urgently.
‘Well, she missed her shift this morning an’ no-one’s been able to get hold of her…. Her mobile’s off.’ The receptionist gulped for breath. ‘Human Resources checked with her flat-mate … she says Hayley didn’t come home last night.’ More hand-wringing. ‘It’s not like her.’
Markham and Noakes exchanged a long look, each thinking of the pint-sized charmer and her artless prattle.
Markham turned to Claire Holder.
‘I want everywhere on lockdown as of now. And I need a floorplan of the facility.’ His tone made it clear he expected immediate compliance.
He turned to the DS. ‘Round up Burton and Doyle. Then find out who was the last person to see Hayley yesterday. She was friends with one of the volunteers … Linda something … see if she knows anything.’
The group scattered.
Behind locked doors, in one of those deranged brains, there were memories that needed to be subdued, to be tranquilized by calm and eventually blotted out altogether.
As if nothing had happened.
5. The Sleep of Reaso
n
MARKHAM’S TEAM ASSEMBLED IN the incident room. Courteously but firmly, Kate Burton took the floorplan that Claire Holder had brought before steering her towards the door.
‘See if you can round up the volunteers and any of Hayley’s colleagues who saw her last thing yesterday.’
Beneath the pan stick, the managing director’s face had turned white, arrogance replaced by sheer terror.
‘You don’t think whoever killed Jon’s got her, do you?’ Her face twisted. ‘Poor little thing … she hadn’t begun to live.’
Burton suddenly liked the woman much better for that remark. Gently she said, ‘We’re not jumping to any conclusions, Ms Holder, and nor should you.’
After the director had left on her errand, Burton rejoined her colleagues and rolled out the floorplan. Intently, they hunched over it.
Rooms were represented by rows of small squares, with numbers neatly printed inside them.
‘There’s a key at the bottom,’ Markham murmured, scanning the list of names. ‘Hold on a minute.’ The DI’s forefinger paused.
‘What is it, sir?’ Burton tried to see what had arrested the boss’s attention.
‘It says Morgue on here….’
Despite the stuffiness of the room, at those words an icicle trickled inch by inch down Burton’s back, as if cold fingers were touching her – cold, softly creeping fingers.
‘Morgue?’ Noakes was equally discomfited. ‘But it’s a mental … er, special … hospital…’ His voice trailed off uncertainly.
‘Presumably they have to be prepared in case there’s a sudden death,’ Markham said slowly. ‘They’d need a side room or somewhere private.’
‘To keep out the gawkers,’ DC Doyle concurred solemnly. ‘I mean, one of the patients might freak out if they saw a dead body getting hauled off.’
‘Bromgrove General’s just next door,’ Burton said. ‘So, if someone dies here, staff can get the body moved quickly without anyone getting upset.’
Noakes was thoughtful.
‘Wonder how many of ’em in here topped themselves.’
His question hung in the air, and the heavy stillness was more oppressive than ever.
They were interrupted by Claire Holder and another woman whose kind, plump face was creased with anxiety.
Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set Page 64