The old man didn’t respond. He didn’t look up even, just continued to sit in his chair and stare blankly into space.
Jason Maxwell indicated the doorway. “Should we talk outside?” He walked away, ducked his head to walk through the door and waited for them in the hallway.
Gareth held out the picture, looking up at the man. “Do you recognise this man?”
Kate watched him carefully, as she had everyone they’d shown the picture too.
“No. I don’t think I do.”
The same response as everyone else. There was just one difference with Jason Maxwell. There was a spark of recognition in his eye. Just for the briefest second. Then he fixed his features in a mirror of confused concentration. A little squint to his eyes. A little frown to his brow. A little purse to the lips. But it was there. She’d seen it. He knew their victim.
“Are you sure?” Kate asked.
Mr Maxwell frowned and stared again at the picture. This time his features were schooled. There was no flicker to indicate he knew the man in the picture. “Pretty sure. Where might I know him from?”
“Here,” Kate said, watching every shift of his body language, every twitch of his hulking muscles. “We believe he was a resident here a few years ago.”
“Really? What makes you think that?”
“We can’t go into the details of an ongoing investigation, Mr Maxwell. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”
“Of course.”
“How long did you say you’ve worked here for?” Gareth asked.
“Fifteen years. I started as a cleaner. Didn’t have much contact with the residents then. I’ve only been a care worker for the past two years. So maybe I did see him here, but not enough to really get to know him. Do you know what I mean? He looks familiar, but nothing more than that. I’m sorry.”
There was a muscle at the corner of his right eye that twitched as he spoke. A tiny, tiny movement that Kate almost missed. One you wouldn’t have seen if you hadn’t been looking for something, anything, as a reaction. But it was there.
“Thank you for your time.” Kate said. “We’ll let you get back to your work.” She produced a card. “If you do think of anything else, where you might know him from, or who he is, please call me.”
“Of course.”
Gareth and Kate walked down the hallway and started down the stairs. Kate pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled Stella’s number.
“Hello there,” Stella said.
“Anything?” Kate asked.
“Nada. Got a few people who think he looks familiar, but nothing more concrete than that.”
“Same here.”
“Anyone left on your list?”
“No. You?”
“Nope. We were just going to head back to the station.”
“Right. I’m going to have another chat with Sister Lodge.” She dropped her voice to a whisper to make sure she couldn’t be heard. “Find out all you can about Jason Maxwell when you get back.”
“Maxwell. The cleaner that turned into a care worker?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He recognised our vic and lied to me.”
“Said he didn’t know him?”
“Yup.”
“How do you know he was lying?”
“Experience, a twitching eye muscle, and he was too nice to the old bloke in there.”
Stella laughed down the line. “Aren’t they supposed to be nice to the old folks?”
“Yeah,” Kate conceded. “But how many of them have you actually seen do that?”
Stella was quiet a moment. “Fair point, well made. I’ll see what I can find. Speak to you soon.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell us if he knew him?” Gareth asked.
“Well, if he has nothing to hide, I can’t really think of a reason.” She led Gareth to the back of the building and Sister Lodge’s office. “Can you?”
“But what’s he hiding?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out, Gareth.” She tapped on the door.
“Come in.”
Sister Diana Lodge sat behind her desk, the same as she had the last time Kate was in the room with her. She wore a dark blue uniform tunic, just like last time, and her dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail at the back of her head. Just like last time. This time, however, her smile seemed genuine and there was a twinkle in her eye as she waved Kate and Gareth into the chairs in front of her desk.
“I’ve been doing some research, Detective.”
“You have?” Kate replied cautiously. The tone in the nurse’s voice putting her on edge.
“Oh yes.” She turned her computer screen towards them. “Quite the reputation you’ve built yourself already, Detective Sergeant Brannon.”
On the screen was a picture of Kate from the night she’d saved Gina from Ally’s attack. She was leading Gina out of her house while clearly shouting orders to her colleagues.
“Feisty.”
Kate’s cheeks warmed as she sat back in the chair. “Just doing my job.” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Sister, tell me about Jason Maxwell.”
She frowned at the sudden change of topic. “What would you like to know?”
“Everything you can tell me.”
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the desk. “Why?” she asked quietly.
Kate raised an eyebrow at her. “I don’t need to give you a reason, Sister. I’m here on an official police investigation. That should be reason enough for you to answer my questions.” Kate leant forward, rested her elbows on her knees, and clasped her hands together. “Unless you’re keeping something from me?”
Diana Lodge licked her lips and clasped her fingers together. Her eyes darted about the room suspiciously. Almost as though she expected that someone was listening to their conversation. “Perhaps we should go and get some coffee.” She touched the lanyard around her neck, for a moment fumbling with the keys hanging from it, then climbed to her feet and led them out of the room. “Coffee would be lovely. What a fabulous suggestion, Detective,” she said with an exaggerated wink.
Kate and Gareth stared at each other before shrugging and deciding to play along. Weird just got weirder.
Once the three of them had climbed into Kate’s car, Sister Lodge spoke again. “Just head out to the lay-by outside of Brandale Staithe. No one will see us there.”
Kate turned on the engine. “This better be good, Sister.”
“It’ll be worth your time,” she said from the back seat.
Kate drove out of the car park and turned right on to the beach road, then right again towards Brandale Staithe. They were at the lay-by in less than five minutes. Kate pulled up next to the old black-and-yellow AA box. It hadn’t worked in years, but it was something of a local landmark. She turned off the engine and twisted in her seat so she could see into the back more easily. “Okay, what are we doing here and what does this have to do with you telling me about Jason Maxwell?”
“Jason? Well, very little to do with him actually. Well, not that I know of, and I can’t imagine any way he could be involved in this, but there’s something very fishy going on at the nursing home.”
“We could’ve told you that,” Gareth said condescendingly.
“Right, but do you have any idea what?” Sister Lodge replied with equal condescension.
He glared at her but said nothing.
“As I thought.” She fiddled with the key lanyard around her neck and pulled something off one of the rings. “This is all the records of the home. Everything since the records were computerised in 2004.”
“Everything?” Kate asked.
“Yes. Accounts, invoices, patient records, drug charts, employee records, agency staff, disciplinary records. Everything.” She handed the flash drive to Kate.
“And what am I looking for on here?”
“Do you know how many residents we have at Brancombe House Nursing Home?”
“Forty-two, no, fo
rty-three.”
“Correct. Do you know how many residents Brancombe House Nursing Home is receiving government funding for?”
Kate raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing it isn’t forty-three.”
“The government is paying funding for forty-four residents to Brancombe House.”
“So you have a spare,” Kate said.
“What’s the name of the spare resident?” Gareth asked.
“No name. Only a number. 3840.”
“Any idea what that means?” Kate asked.
“None. But it’s been on the system since December fifth 2013.”
Kate smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. So you’ve got a case of embezzlement on your hands.”
“Yes, but I can’t trace where the payment is being made to.”
“I don’t understand, Sister, you just said that the nursing home was receiving the funding from the government for the extra person.”
She nodded. “Call me Diana. I’ve always hated being called Sister.”
“Okay, but I’m still confused.”
“Right, sorry. So the paperwork was all completed for our mystery person more than six years ago, and until the night of the fifth of December 2013, the payment came into the bank account of the nursing home. After that, it was redirected. It’s now paid from the government directly in to a different bank account.”
“But you have no idea whose account?”
“No.”
“And no idea how to trace the payment?”
“Well, I tried calling the NHS accounts department this morning, but without a name or a reference to try and trace the payment, they didn’t seem to be having much luck isolating the payment.”
“And the number 3840 wasn’t the reference number?”
“No.”
“How much is the payment for?”
“Four hundred a week.”
“And all the details of it are on here?” She held up the flash drive.
“Yes,” Diana said.
“Okay. We’ll get into this. We have a specialist who just loves to analyse data and can work miracles with it. Now tell me about Jason Maxwell.”
Diana frowned. “What about him?”
Kate sighed. “I think he recognised the man in this picture, but he lied to me about it. Could he be the one responsible for this little embezzlement?”
Diana’s frown deepened. “I don’t see how. He worked as a cleaner and now he’s a care worker. He doesn’t have access to the finances or the bank accounts. Never has from what I can tell. And seeing him input the data for his patients, well, the man doesn’t have what you’d call groundbreaking IT skills, if you know what I mean?” She mimed a person picking at a keyboard using both index fingers and nothing else.
“So why would he lie?”
“I don’t know, Detective. Jason has been a godsend to us here at Brancombe House. He works double shifts whenever we’re short-staffed. He’s wonderful with the patients, and he genuinely does seem to care about them. He spends time with them. Talking to them, reading to them. I even found him putting nail polish on one of the old dears last week.” She sighed. “I wish I had a whole staff full of Jasons, if I’m honest.”
“Does he live alone? Married? Kids?”
“No. He never mentions anyone. Personally, I think he’s gay.”
“But no boyfriend?”
“No, like I said. He never mentions anyone. He comes in, does his work, and then goes home again.”
“Any friends on the staff?”
Diana thought for a moment, her brow creased in concentration. “Not that I know of. He’s a quiet sort of guy.”
Another car pulled up in the lay-by and a woman with a dog climbed out. She crossed the road and headed up towards Barrow Common.
Kate frowned and made a note to make sure she took Merlin for a good walk later. “How did he come to start working here?”
“He told me once that he came to work here for his work experience from secondary school. He liked it so much that he never wanted to work anywhere else.”
“And how did he make the jump from cleaner to carer?”
“Necessity.”
“His or yours?”
“Ours, no doubt.”
“Before your time?” Kate asked.
“Exactly.”
“Can you think of a reason why he’d lie about knowing this man?”
“No.” Diana crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry, Detective, but I can’t. What makes you so sure he is?”
Kate frowned. Could she have been mistaken? Could it just have been a nervous twitch? People get nervous all the time when they’re asked questions by the police. It wasn’t an unreasonable reaction. Was she mistaken? Was it really recognition she saw?
“I don’t know.” She indicated the flash drive. “We’ll look into this and find out what’s going on with your spare claimant. I might need some extra information from you, though.”
“Anything.”
“And I’ll definitely need to know who was doing the books back then, and since.”
“Okay. It’s a woman by the name of Alison Temple who does the accounts now. She lives in South Creake. Works from home doing the accounts and payroll for small businesses in the area.”
“And how long has she been doing the books?”
“About five months. I asked her to take on the work shortly after I started. It’s taken us a while to get on top of things, but it was Alison who found the discrepancy and the 3840 number.”
“And who did the books before?”
“A number of people, to be honest. I’ll get you a list of the names and e-mail it over to you.”
A campervan pulled into the lay-by and a couple climbed out, surveying their surroundings. No doubt deciding whether or not to call the spot home for the night, despite the no-overnighting sign on the AA box door.
“Okay. I can start with Alison. There’s something else I’d like you to do, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have photographs at the nursing home?”
“Hm, I see. I don’t recall seeing any, but I’ll speak to some of the staff. Eva maybe, or Anna. If anyone would have any or know of any tucked away somewhere it would be those two.”
“Please, I need you to be discreet. I’d much prefer no one else on the staff knew about this, especially anyone who was there in 2013.”
Diana frowned. “But—”
“This is an ongoing investigation and you’ve just given me a mountain load more work to do on this case.”
Diana nodded and sighed. “Very well. I’ll be discreet.”
“Thank you. Now, who has access to all the computers?”
“Pretty much everyone on the staff. They all use them for something. Updating patient records, medication charts, notes.”
“Even the carers?”
“Yes, they have to log when residents have a bath or shower, fluid input and output in some cases, and if residents are fed with an NG tube they document the nourishment given and when.”
“So everyone has access to the computers.”
“Yes. But different staff require different levels, and no one but me has administrator-level access.”
Kate shook her head. “Someone who is any good with computers doesn’t necessarily need you to grant them admin rights on a system like you have. They just need access. They can take care of the rest.”
“You make it sound like I have a hacker on my staff.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you do have someone who is very good with computers. There’s no other way they could pull this off and continue to hide.”
“I understand.”
“Why didn’t you bring this to the police sooner?”
“Alison only told me last night that she’d found the number and finally got confirmation from the accounts department what was being paid, supposedly, to Brancombe House. She’d been trying to get to the bottom of some tax snafu. Like most things with the ta
x office, it took a while to get answers. And like I said, I called the accounts department myself just this morning to try and get more information, but they weren’t much help.”
“Okay, so last question.”
“Yes?”
“Why the hell did we have to come out here for you to tell us this?” She twirled her finger around to indicate their surroundings.
Diana laughed. “Made it more exciting, didn’t it?”
Kate raised her eyebrow and waited.
Diana sighed in frustration. “Fine. I’m not sure who I can trust either. Not when it comes to that information.” She shrugged. “Whoever it is, is good enough to hide what they’ve been doing for a long time and I have no idea who it is. For all I know they could be listening to every conversation I have there. I’m afraid that if they know that I’m on to them, then they’ll just disappear, or the trail will at least, and then we’ll never catch them.”
Kate had to admit, that despite the woman’s obvious paranoia, it was a fair point, but it only brought up more questions. If their body and the embezzlement were connected, then wasn’t it already too late? Wouldn’t they already be on the run since the skeleton had been found? Why stick around to be caught?
“Sorry, I’ve thought of something else,” Kate said.
“Please,” Diana responded.
“Has anyone resigned in the last couple of days?”
Diana shook her head. “Trust me, you’d have heard me complain from here to Timbuktu if they had. I’m short-staffed as it is. Chronically. I’m already struggling to cover all the shifts I need on a day-to-day basis, what with people off sick, holidays, and the usual hangover sick days. Weekends are the worst, of course. If I lose another member of staff, I’ll really be up the creek without a paddle.”
“What about sick? Has anyone called in sick today?”
“Oh, yeah. Maja Hanin. She calls in sick regularly though, so I don’t read too much into it. She’s a cleaner, so it doesn’t affect the patients too much, and she has asthma, so not the best career choice for her. She has an asthma attack at least once every couple of weeks.”
“And she had one today?”
“No. She had one at work yesterday. Not too bad, but she’ll need a couple of days to recover from it. She was on the evening shift.”
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