by Frank Smith
‘How’s the patient?’
‘Still out of it. He’s not been down long, sir, but one of the nurses was telling me that he’s not quite as badly hurt as they first thought, so it might be possible to talk to him when he does come round.’
‘Have you spoken to his doctor?’
The corners of Ann Liscombe’s mouth turned down. ‘I’m afraid he’s not all that communicative,’ she said carefully. ‘Seems to think it’s none of my business.’
Paget frowned. ‘Does he understand how important it is that we talk to Smallwood?’
‘Oh, I think he understands all right,’ the girl said. ‘It’s just that he’s not, well, very forthcoming, if you know what I mean, sir. I think it might be different if a man asked him.’
Paget’s eyes grew cold. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Where can I find him?’
‘I believe I heard him being called to Lansing ward a few minutes ago,’ she said. ‘That’s down on three.’
‘Thank you, Liscombe. And his name?’
‘Trotter, sir.’
‘Thanks. I’ll get back to you.’
Paget took the stairs down to three and walked along the corridor to Lansing ward. Dr Trotter, he was told, was with a patient, but he would be out in a few minutes if Paget cared to wait.
Paget thanked the nurse and wandered over to a window overlooking Royal Park. It extended to the north of the hospital grounds and was bounded by a sweeping curve of the river. Dense clumps of willow, ash and sycamore ran down to the river’s edge, while giant oaks stood guard above the paths that wound their way across the sloping parkland.
It struck him that in all the time he’d been in Broadminster he’d never once walked in the park. Nor had he found time to walk the hills and valleys that beckoned so invitingly. He and Jill used to enjoy walking, and when they were first married they would often go out on weekends and walk for miles.
But then the job … Paget sighed. They hadn’t been out once in the year before Jill died, and now there didn’t seem to be much point in going out alone.
‘Chief Inspector Paget?’
Paget turned and found himself looking down at Dr Trotter. His name tag was pinned to his lapel. The doctor was a small, neat, thin-faced young man with pale blue eyes. His fair hair was brushed straight back, and he had a pencil-thin moustache. ‘You wished to see me, I believe?’
‘Yes. About Leonard Smallwood,’ Paget said. ‘I understand there is a possibility that we may be able to talk to him soon.’
Trotter’s lips compressed into a thin line. ‘I’ve no idea who told you that,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s far too early to say.’ He began to turn away but Paget stopped him.
‘I’m sure you must realize how important it is that we talk to him,’ he said. ‘His mother was killed on Monday night, and we think he may be able to help us with our enquiries.’
A quick frown of annoyance crossed Trotter’s face. ‘That is of no concern to me,’ he said primly. ‘My concern is for my patient. His condition is serious, and I’ll not have him badgered by the police or anyone else. And I must remind you, Chief Inspector, it is my decision.’
Paget was fast losing patience. ‘No one is suggesting it isn’t your decision, Doctor,’ he said thinly, ‘but I repeat: the sooner we can talk to Smallwood, the better. All I’m asking for is your cooperation. I would appreciate it if you would let the constable on duty know when you feel Smallwood can answer a few simple questions?’
Trotter’s moustache quivered. ‘I’m not in the habit of discussing my patients with constables, Chief Inspector,’ he said brusquely. He turned and began to walk away.
Paget’s anger boiled to the surface and spilled over. His hand shot out and grabbed the little man by the shoulder and spun him round. ‘Now you listen to me,’ he began, but stopped dead when a voice behind him said: ‘Is there a problem here?’
It seemed to Paget as if every nerve-end in his body had suddenly gone cold. He thought his ears were playing tricks on him. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. But even as he turned, he knew it was.
The woman who faced him was almost as tall as he was. Slim, dark hair, dark eyes in an oval face; finely chiselled features – perhaps a little fuller in the face than he remembered. She stood there with her hands thrust into the pockets of her white coat, eyes cool; quizzical; challenging.
He felt like a schoolboy caught smoking behind the bicycle shed as he removed his hand from Trotter’s shoulder.
‘Andr – Dr McMillan,’ he said. ‘How nice to see you again.’ Even as he spoke the words, he thought how utterly banal they sounded. ‘I had no idea you were back.’
‘Chief Inspector,’ said Andrea McMillan neutrally as she turned to Trotter. ‘Is there a problem, Doctor?’ she asked again.
Trotter brushed angrily at his shoulder as if Paget’s hand were still there. ‘The chief inspector seems to think he knows more about the condition of my patient than I do,’ he said spitefully. He lifted his chin. ‘He can’t wait, it seems, to interrogate a boy who is still unconscious.’
Andrea McMillan turned her gaze on Paget. Her face held no expression. ‘Is this true, Chief Inspector? We are talking, I assume, about the boy under police guard?’
So formal. So cold!
‘We are,’ he said stiffly. ‘Leonard Smallwood. I would like to talk to him as soon as possible. I am well aware that his condition is serious, and I have no wish to challenge Dr Trotter’s authority, but I would like him to agree to let the constable on duty know as soon as he thinks Smallwood is fit enough to answer a few questions.’
Andrea turned a questioning eye on Trotter, who shrugged. ‘I have no objection to that request,’ he said, ‘and if it had been phrased in that way in the first place, then…’
‘Good. Then we can consider it settled,’ said Andrea. ‘I shan’t detain you further, Doctor. I know you’re busy.’
Trotter flashed a spiteful glance at Paget, then turned and walked away.
Paget searched for words. There had been no words left to say when they’d parted months before, and now it seemed that nothing had changed.
‘I’m afraid you took me by surprise,’ he confessed. ‘I had no idea that you were back. You’re looking well. The country life must have agreed with you.’
When she had made her decision to return to Broadminster, Andrea had known that there would come a day when she would come face to face with Neil Paget, and she had believed herself prepared for that moment. But this was not the way she had imagined their first encounter. Down there on the farm, working with Kate Ferris, she had come to terms with the fact that Neil had only been doing his job to the best of his ability. It was she who had lied to him. Not that she’d had any choice, but she could hardly blame him for his suspicions when every shred of evidence he had pointed to her. Yet, illogical as it might be, she did blame him for not trusting her. Perhaps if he hadn’t been quite so much the policeman …
And now she’d come round the corner to find him manhandling one of the doctors, his face dark, his manner threatening. Not that Trotter was any prize, but still …
‘Yes, I think it did,’ she said. She began to move away. Seeing him again had stirred emotions she had thought were safely locked away, and all she could think of was that she must get away. She needed time. She was not ready for this.
‘And Sarah? How is she?’ He fell in step beside her.
‘Sarah’s fine. Just fine, thank you.’ The door to one of the work stations was open, and she walked purposefully toward it, seeking an escape. ‘I’m sorry, Neil,’ she said abruptly, ‘but I am rather busy, so unless there is anything else…?’
The hope that they might talk died within him. It was obvious by her tone, by her very manner, that Andrea wished him to be gone. ‘No, I don’t think there is, Andrea,’ he said quietly. ‘But it is nice to see you back here again.’
Andrea closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She could hear a drumming in her ears and realized she was li
stening to her own heart. How could she have cut him off like that? What must he think? If only … But it was too late, now.
Paget walked slowly down the corridor, his thoughts in turmoil. Andrea’s abrupt departure had taken him as much by surprise as her unexpected appearance. Not that he could blame her. He must have looked every inch the bullying policeman as she came round the corner, no doubt confirming what she already thought of him. If only she could have heard that weasel, Trotter, a few seconds earlier …
But she hadn’t, had she? Savagely, he punched the button for the lift.
But why had Andrea returned to work here at this very hospital where they had first met? He’d have thought that this would be the last place she would have chosen. But one thing was quite certain, he thought ruefully as he made his way out of the hospital: Andrea had not come back because of him! She’d made that absolutely clear by literally shutting the door in his face.
And that, he thought dispassionately, tells me exactly where I stand.
Yet he replayed the scene in the hospital corridor over and over again in his head as he made his way back to Charter Lane. If only he had said this; if only it hadn’t been Trotter, perhaps …
He sighed heavily and pushed the turbulent thoughts firmly to the back of his mind, forcing himself to concentrate on his driving. Late afternoon traffic was beginning to build, and children on their way home from school clogged the narrow streets. It was like this every school day, but today it irritated him. And it did nothing to improve his temper when he arrived at headquarters to find his parking space occupied.
Annoyed, he drove round the back, and was only slightly mollified when he spotted a young WPC getting into her car. He pulled to one side to allow her room to back out, then fumed impatiently while she adjusted her seat belt, checked her lipstick in the mirror, then lit a cigarette before starting her car. She smiled disarmingly as she passed – and it was only then that he remembered he’d told Liscombe he’d get back to her.
Chapter 13
Tania Costello ignored the curious stares of passers-by as she, Tregalles, and a policewoman got out of the car outside the maisonette in Burton Road. She led the way up the cracked flagstone path to the front door and was about to open it when she stopped. ‘It’s open,’ she breathed softly. ‘Mum never leaves it open.’ She took a step backward, and the policewoman gripped her arm as if afraid the girl might try to run.
Tregalles moved forward and pushed the door open. The lock was broken, and the wood around it splintered. The hall and stairs were empty. He stepped inside. A faint sound came from somewhere near the back of the house. A door to his right stood open and he looked in.
The room had been hit by a tornado by the look of it. Pictures hung awry, furniture had been overturned and ripped to shreds, and anything that would break was broken. Tregalles moved on to the door at the end of the short hall, and pushed it open. That room, too, had received the same treatment.
He heard the sound again, this time louder, and he saw a woman huddled in a corner behind an overturned table. She had blood on her face and she was whimpering.
‘Mum!’ Tania pushed past him and flew across the room. She knelt and put out her hand, but the woman flinched and pulled away. Her eyes focused on the girl, and her face became distorted.
‘Get out!’ she snarled. ‘Get out!’ Her voice rose to a thin scream. ‘This is all your fault. You and that Lenny Smallwood.’ Her hand shot out and strong fingers fastened in the girl’s hair, twisting viciously.
Tania shrieked as she fought to free herself, and both Tregalles and the policewoman dropped to their knees as they tried to part mother and daughter. The woman on the floor kicked out savagely and caught Tregalles on the knee. He fell back against the girl. Tania wrenched herself free and in a second she was gone, down the hall and out into the street. The policewoman scrambled to her feet and started after her, but she was far too late. By the time she reached the door, the girl had vanished.
The policewoman returned to help Tregalles attend to Tania’s mother, who, now the girl was gone, began to calm down. The sergeant had the feeling he’d seen the woman before, but he couldn’t place her. Her ash blonde hair fell untidily across a face that was heavily made up, and he thought she must have been pretty once. But time had not dealt kindly with her. The once firm flesh sagged beneath the make-up, and the eyes had lost their lustre. She couldn’t be more than forty at the outside, but she looked much older.
Between them they got her to a chair, but not before she’d made them find her cigarettes and light one for her. There was a nasty cut across her forehead where, she said, one of the two men who’d burst into the house had hit her. She’d fallen heavily, and her arm and hip were badly bruised. While Tregalles called for an ambulance, the policewoman bathed and bound the cut, then found a blanket and wrapped the woman in it.
As for the two men who had attacked her, she said everything had happened so fast that she couldn’t begin to describe them. But she avoided their eyes, and it was evident to Tregalles that she had no intention of giving them an accurate description.
‘What did they want?’ he asked.
‘Money,’ she said. ‘I told them they’d be lucky. I asked them if they thought I’d be living like this if I had any money. That’s when one of them hit me.’ The woman shivered and huddled down inside the blanket. ‘They said Lenny told them the money was here. That I had it. The little swine!’ She glanced around. ‘Then they tore the place apart.’
‘Did Lenny leave money here, Mrs Costello?’
The woman glance up sharply. ‘That’s her name,’ she snapped. ‘Kept her father’s name, though God knows why. Mine’s Price. Misty Price.’
Misty Price! Now Tregalles remembered. She used to work the strip at the bottom end of Bridge Street. He’d pulled her in more than once himself. Must be close to ten years ago. ‘The money?’ he reminded her.
Misty Price drew deeply on her cigarette. ‘If that lying little git ever had any money, I never saw any of it,’ she said. ‘And I told ’em so. Sneaking in here of a night. I knew he was up there. I could hear them whispering and going at it. They think I don’t know, but I do.’
The cigarette fell from her fingers, and she began to shake. Delayed shock took hold of her, and rasping sobs racked her body until it was all they could do to hold her in the chair.
* * *
Paget sat at his desk long after everyone else had gone. Seeing Andrea this afternoon had awakened feelings and emotions he’d thought were safely buried.
Two days from now would mark the anniversary of Jill’s death, and he had been preoccupied for weeks with memories of their short time together. The letter from Patrick had sharpened those images, and now he felt guilty because his mind was filled with thoughts of Andrea.
Paget rubbed his face with his hands and yawned. Brooding over it wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Time to pack it in for another day. He stood up, stretched, and made his way downstairs and out into the fresh air. The clouds were tinged with red, and he hoped that meant the weather might be changing for the better.
Dusk had settled over the valley by the time he arrived home. He walked through to the kitchen and put the light on, and the first thing he saw was Patrick’s letter on the table where he’d left it that morning.
He tried to ignore it, but it was no use. He would have to write. Try to explain. He sat down at the table and read the letter again, then crushed it in his hand.
He didn’t have to do it tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
* * *
Tony Rudge gathered up the scraps of newspaper and stuffed them in a drawer. He pulled on the rubber gloves he’d taken from the cleaners’ room earlier in the day, and picked up the sheet of A4 paper once again. It had taken him more than an hour to cut and paste the letters on, but it was time well spent, he told himself.
It had been hard deciding how much to ask for. He didn’t want to be too greedy. That was where people made their mi
stake. Asking for too much. Five hundred. That would do for a start. There would be more later. Lots more.
He shivered with anticipation. He could hardly contain his excitement as he folded the paper carefully, then put it in an envelope and sealed it. Now, all he had to do was get it there, but he’d thought that out as well. His car was old, clapped out and noisy, so he’d parked it as far away from the house as possible so no one would be disturbed when he started up.
He’d thought of posting the letter, but he couldn’t wait that long. Besides, something might happen to it along the way. No, he’d deliver it personally through the letter-box.
A tremor of excitement ran through him. The thought of slipping unseen through the night to push the letter through the slot brought a rush of adrenalin, and he could hardly keep his hands from shaking.
Now, the name. It mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. Tony dragged out the old portable typewriter from under the bed. He hadn’t used it in years; since he’d been at school, in fact. He blew the dust off it and tucked the envelope in behind the platen. The platen was small and hard to turn and he had to force the envelope through. He should have addressed the envelope before he put the letter in, but he supposed it wouldn’t matter if it was a bit creased.
He typed the name. The print was small, and he felt disappointed. The letters should have been big and bold. He went back and underlined each word, then added ‘Personal and Private’ in the lower left-hand corner. That looked better.
Tony slipped the letter into his pocket and checked the time. Ten to twelve. Still a bit early. Best wait for half an hour; make sure that everyone was asleep.
Chapter 14
Thursday – 16 May
There was no stamp on the envelope, so it must have been hand delivered during the night. The name and address had been underlined, and it was marked ‘Personal and Private’ in the lower left-hand corner.
The message inside the envelope was made up of cuttings from a newspaper. The cuttings were glued to a standard size sheet of writing paper, and there could be little doubt about their meaning.