by Val McDermid
Blister pack of strong painkillers. Paula frowned. She didn’t think you could get these off prescription. When she’d torn a muscle in her calf a few months before and she’d been in excruciating pain for a couple of days, Elinor had sneaked her a couple from the hospital, swearing her to secrecy. Paula had teased her about it. ‘Is one of your post-op patients on paracetamol tonight, then?’ Elinor had confessed that they were samples from a pharmaceutical rep.
‘All doctors have a drawer stuffed with freebies,’ she said. ‘You’d think we’d know better, but we self-medicate like mad.’
Was the victim a doctor? Or someone who had a problem with pain? Paula filed the question away for now and returned to the bag’s contents. Three pens; one from a hotel, one from a stationery supply chain, one from an animal charity. A bunch of keys – a Fiat car key, two Yales, two mortises. House, car, office? House, car, somebody else’s house? No way of telling yet. A couple of crumpled receipts from a Freshco Express in Harriestown revealed a taste for pepperoni pizza, chicken tikka pies and low-fat strawberry yoghurt.
The iPhone would be the treasure trove. Paula woke it from its slumber. The screen saver was a fluffy tortoiseshell cat lying on its back. When she tried to open the screen, it demanded a password. That meant the phone would have to go off to the technical team, where one of the geeks would unlock its mysteries eventually. Not like on MIT, where their own IT specialist Stacey Chen was always on tap. Stacey would have coaxed every last morsel of data from the phone in record time, speeding the investigation on its way. But here in her brave new world, Paula’s evidence would have to join the queue. No rush jobs here; the budget wouldn’t take the strain. Frustrated, she wrote a label for the phone and bagged it separately.
All that remained was a slim metal case and a fat wallet. She flicked open the case to reveal a short stack of business cards. Nadia Wilkowa was apparently the North West Area Representative for Bartis Health. There was a web address as well as a mobile number and email address for Nadia. Paula took out her phone and rang the number. The bagged iPhone did a jittering shimmy across the table before the voicemail cut in. ‘Hi, this is Nadia Wilkowa.’ There was a faint East European accent, but it had been almost completely painted over by polite Bradfield. ‘I’m sorry I can’t talk to you right now, but please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.’ A welcome confirmation.
Paula flipped open the wallet. Three credit cards in the name of Nadzieja Wilkowa; loyalty cards for Freshco, the Co-op and a fashion store group; a book of first-class stamps with two remaining; a tight bundle of receipts and forty pounds in cash. No photographs, no convenient address. She took a quick pass through the receipts. Car parking, petrol, sandwich shops, fast-food outlets and a couple of restaurant bills. She’d pass them on to the officer in charge of doling out assignments to the team. Someone else could go through them in more detail, preferably after they’d got her diary off her phone.
And that was it. It was all very well to live an orderly life, but it didn’t help detectives like Paula when you ended up dead. What they really needed was a home address. She opened the internet browser on her phone and navigated to Bartis Health’s home page. Their offices were located in a town in Leicestershire she’d never heard of. Their business model appeared to be based on producing cheap generic versions of drugs whose patents had expired. Plenty of uptake but tight margins, Paula suspected.
She called the number on the contact page. The woman who answered the phone was rightly suspicious of her request for information but agreed to call back and ask to be connected to the extension perched on a corner table. Paula had little confidence in the capabilities of the system, but she was happy to be proved wrong less than five minutes later. ‘Why are you asking about Nadia? Has something happened? Surely she’s not in any kind of trouble,’ the woman asked as soon as they were connected.
‘Do you know Nadia well?’ Paula was careful with her tense.
‘I wouldn’t say well. I’ve met her a few times. She’s a very friendly, open sort of person. And they think very highly of her here. But what’s happened? Has she been in an accident back home?’
‘Back home?’
‘In Poland. She emailed… let me see, it must be three weeks ago? Anyway, she said her mother had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and she asked if she could have compassionate leave to go home and be with her mother for the surgery. Because her mother’s on her own now, with her dad being dead and her sister in America. It was inconvenient, but you don’t want to lose somebody that’s as good at her job as Nadia, so the boss said yes, she could have a month.’ The woman stopped for breath.
Baffled, Paula said, ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘I opened the email myself,’ the woman said. ‘And I had to email her only last week with a query about a customer’s repeat order. She answered me the same day. She said her mum was making a slow recovery but she’d be back next week.’
It made no sense. Had Nadia made an unscheduled early return? Or had her killer sent the emails, pretending to be her, covering up the fact that she’d never left Bradfield? Was it an elaborate sham, a scam to cover Nadia’s disappearance? But the woman was talking again, cutting through Paula’s racing thoughts. ‘So has something happened to Nadia? Is that why you’re calling?’
Paula closed her eyes and wished she’d asked someone else to make this call. ‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you that Nadia has died in suspicious circumstances.’ It was true without being anywhere near the whole truth.
A moment’s silence. ‘In Poland?’
‘No. Here in Bradfield.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We’re still making inquiries,’ Paula said, stalling.
‘That’s terrible,’ the woman said, her voice faint. ‘I can’t believe it. Nadia? What happened?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t go into details. But we need help. We don’t have any addresses for her. Home or work. Or a next of kin. I was hoping you might have access to that information?’
‘Let me get Nadia’s personnel file on the screen,’ the woman said. ‘She worked from home, so there’s no office as such.’ One less place to take apart looking for answers to the questions raised by Nadia’s death.
Ten minutes later, Paula had every scrap of information Bartis Health knew about Nadia. There wasn’t much, but it was a start. She had an address in the Harriestown district. She also knew that Nadzieja Wilkowa was twenty-six years old and had worked for Bartis for eighteen months. She had a degree in pharmacology from the university in Poznan and spoke excellent English. She visited head office every two or three months. Her territory covered the North of England and she had been one of the company’s most successful sales reps. The next of kin she’d given was her mother, with an address in Leszno. A place Paula had never heard of, let alone been able to point to it on a map. She wasn’t sure of the process involved in informing overseas next of kin, but she knew there would be one. At least that was one death knock she wouldn’t have to deal with herself. Or the interview to ascertain whether Nadia had been in Poland recently.
Paula checked her watch. What she should do now was pass on Nadia’s phone to the techies, scoop up a couple of junior detectives and turn over her flat in a bid to find how her life intersected with her killer. But she was conscious of the promise she’d made to Torin McAndrew and that she’d done nothing to fulfil it. She had a few hours before the boy would be texting her. Nadia was dead, and Torin was very much alive.
In one sense, it was no contest. But Paula had been drilled by Carol Jordan that her duty was to speak for the dead. And as well as speaking for the dead, she also had a responsibility to the living. A killer was walking free and it was her job to find him before he killed someone else. What could be more important than that?
13
Bev felt as if she was swimming upwards through something thick and heavy. Not heavy like mud. More like milkshake or emulsion paint. Her lim
bs felt weighted down, the world impenetrably black. It slowly dawned on her that her eyes were closed. But when she opened them, nothing changed. Her head throbbed when she moved it, but she forced herself to turn it back and forth, yet still there was absolutely nothing to be seen. The thought drifted through her muzzy brain that this must be what a black hole was like. Black, black and more black beyond that.
Slowly the wooziness lifted, enough for her to understand that this darkness was something to fear, not simply wonder at. As the fog of unconsciousness dispersed Bev tried to make sense of where she was and what had happened to her. Her head hurt and there was a sickly sweet taste at the back of her throat. The last thing she remembered was opening the boot of her hatchback to stow a couple of bags of groceries she’d picked up on the way home. After that, nothing. A blank. A terrifying blank.
She had no way of knowing how long she’d been unconscious. Minutes? No, surely more than minutes. Wherever she was, it wasn’t the car park at Freshco. Hours, then? How many hours? What was Torin thinking? Was he afraid? Was he angry with her? Did he think she’d abandoned him and gone off to have fun without letting him know? What would he do without her? Would he raise the alarm or would he be too scared of what might happen to him without her? The thoughts scampered in her head like a hamster on a wheel. Christ, she had to get a grip.
‘OK. Don’t think about Torin. Put it behind you and move on.’ She said the words aloud then wished she hadn’t. Wherever she was, the acoustic was dead, her voice flat and muffled. Still determined to keep her fear at arm’s length, Bev decided it would make sense to discover the limits of her location. She was sitting down, on a smooth surface. That realisation led to another. She wasn’t wearing her trousers, socks or shoes any more. Her hand crept down her body. She was wearing her own bra, but the lower underwear definitely wasn’t hers. Skimpy lacy panties were not her style. Lace made her itch, and she liked loose-fitting cotton against her skin. She refused to think about what that meant.
It was just flesh, when you got right down to it. She’d had no knowledge, no emotional engagement with anything that had happened while she was unconscious. In a sense, she told herself, it was no more a violation than any surgical procedure carried out under general anaesthetic. Most people would freak out if they had to witness what was done to their bodies on the operating table. Ignorance wasn’t only bliss, it was what allowed them to be grateful for the surgeon’s knife. Bev could manage ignorance, she was pretty sure of that.
She explored the surface she was sitting on. Smooth, cool but not cold. When she moved her leg, it was warm from where her flesh had been resting. She extended her arms slowly, but couldn’t straighten them. Then she slid down till her feet hit the far end of her prison. She moved one foot around and realised there was a sort of step there. Finally, she returned to a sitting position. There were a few inches between her head and the immovable top of what she had to admit to herself was a box. A metre wide, a metre and a half long and a little over a metre high. Plastic lined. A softer plastic seam round the top that made it light-tight, and presumably airtight too. With what felt like a step at one end. The only thing she could think of that fitted the description was a chest freezer.
She was locked inside a chest freezer.
Bev wasn’t someone who panicked easily, but realising where she was set her heart pounding in terror. If the person who had put her here wanted to kill her, all they had to do was flick a switch and let hypothermia do the job for them.
Or just wait till the air ran out.
14
The middle of the afternoon wasn’t the best time to get the undivided attention of anyone in the pharmacy at Bradfield Cross Hospital. Especially on a day when they were short a member of staff. But then, from what Paula had gathered from Dr Elinor Blessing and from Bev herself, there wasn’t a spell during the working day when the pharmacists and their assistants weren’t run off their feet. The accurate filling of hospital prescriptions was a process that never let up. Sometimes Paula thought the advancement of human learning came down to nothing except more sophisticated ways not to feel the pain.
Bev’s deputy, Dan Birchall, looked like a member of a minor boy band run to seed. The lineaments of a handsome young man lurked beneath the slack fleshiness of his face, the neatly trimmed beard unable to disguise the jowls forming along his jawline. He still moved with a certain grace, almost dancing between the shelves and cabinets. But it was a dance whose tempo was starting to slip and whose steps looked a little more desperate with every passing year. ‘You’re Dr Blessing’s lady, aren’t you?’ was his response when Paula introduced herself. It wasn’t a line that endeared him to her.
‘I’m looking into the whereabouts of your chief pharmacist, Ms McAndrew.’ Paula smiled. There was no mileage in anything other than working the witness for whatever he might know. ‘Her son has reported her missing.’
Dan rolled his eyes. ‘Right,’ he said, stretching the word as far as it would go. ‘Well, suddenly, something makes sense. We’ve been at sixes and sevens all day, wondering what was up with Bev. Because Bev would never just not show. Totally not her style.’
Paula pulled up a lab stool and sat down, indicating he should do the same. But he remained on his feet, leaning against the counter with ankles crossed and arms folded. It made her wonder what he had to hide. If she’d been Tony Hill, no doubt she’d have worked it out already. But her gift was for interrogation; she was accustomed to taking the long way round. ‘So you’ve had no communication from her?’
He shook his head. ‘Not a word. Not a text, not an email, not a message. At first, I assumed she’d been caught up in traffic. Except Bev somehow always manages not to get caught up in traffic.’ He rolled his eyes again. ‘That’s Bev. So organised she listens to the travel news with breakfast. But once it got to half past nine, I thought there was no way Bev would be an hour late without calling in. So I tried her home number and her mobile. I got the answering machine and the voicemail.’ He spread his hands. ‘What else could I do?’
‘Did it occur to you to go round and check she was OK?’
He gave her a peevish look. ‘Why would I do that? It’s not like she lives alone. If anything had happened to her, Torin the Wonder Boy could have called for help. Besides —’ He waved impatiently at the bustle in the dispensary. ‘Look at this place. We were already one down. I couldn’t walk away from the rest of the team. We only took half an hour each for lunch as it was.’ He seemed more irritated than worried. Paula hoped that whatever had happened to Bev wasn’t the kind of thing that would make his annoyance come back to haunt him.
‘I appreciate that. You’ve got patients to consider.’
Dan pounced on the get-out. ‘Exactly. People rely on us.’
‘So, when did you last see Bev?’
‘Yesterday. A bit after half past five. She was through in the office.’ He pointed to a cubicle tucked away in the far corner. ‘I was going for a birthday drink with Bob Symes, one of the porters. I asked her if she fancied joining us, but she said she had some paperwork to wrap up and then she had to go to Freshco on the way home. So I left her to it.’
‘Was there anybody else still working?’
‘Well, the duty pharmacist, obviously. She comes in at five and she’s on till half past midnight. The night-duty dispenser does midnight till eight thirty.’ He flapped a hand dismissively. ‘But you won’t be interested in the hell that is our staffing roster.’
Paula made a note on her pad. ‘I’ll need the details of the duty pharmacist.’
Dan nodded. ‘No problem. Vahni Bhat, that’s her name. I’ll give you her numbers when we’re done. She’ll be in tonight, if you want to see her.’
‘Thanks.’ She looked around. Two young women and an older man were focused on what they were doing, paying no attention to her and Dan. Paula didn’t often find herself in a workplace where the staff were so overwhelmed with their own tasks that they ignored a police inquiry in their midst.
‘Was Bev particularly close to anyone here at work?’
Dan scratched his beard and frowned, his eyes sliding away from hers. ‘I wouldn’t have said so. Don’t get me wrong, we’re good enough mates here. And heaven knows, I’ve worked with Bev for a million years. But we don’t live in each other’s pockets.’ Still he wasn’t meeting her eyes, using the pretext of keeping an eye on his colleagues to avoid her. ‘Come the end of the working day, we all do our own thing. Bev was very family orientated. Torin came first with her.’ A little edge there, she noted. Had Dan wanted Bev to be more interested in him? Or had there once been something more than friendship between them? It was hard to tell. Paula thought she might run that one past Elinor and see whether there had been any gossip.
‘You called him Torin the Wonder Boy. What’s that about, Dan?’ Paula kept her tone light, almost teasing.
One corner of his mouth twisted downwards in a rueful grimace. ‘I tease her because she’s always going on about how great he is. I’ve got a kid of my own, Becky, but I don’t make out she’s the smartest, the prettiest, the most talented. The way Bev speaks about Torin, you’d think nobody ever had a kid before. That’s all.’ He shrugged and smiled, sharing a look of complicity with her. ‘No big deal.’
‘He knew enough to report her missing.’ Paula looked around the room. ‘So as far as you’re aware, Bev had no plans for yesterday evening?’
‘What she said to me was, Freshco and then home.’
‘Would she have said if she’d had plans?’