A Dead Question

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Yes, please.’ He held out his cup and sighed. ‘I’ll try the electoral register first.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning was cold and dry. The sky was clear and blue and the sparkle of frost, soon washed away by the sun, jewelled the plants in the Doctor’s garden. It was a good-to-be-alive day. It was also Saturday.

  One aspect of Honey’s life had become a battle of wits. She was determined to live her life as fully as was compatible with giving her daughter a safe and healthy start in life. She thought that too many parents were prepared to abandon life in favour of their children; but if those children in turn repeated that attitude, who was ever going to live a life? June, on the other hand, was just as determined that the moment of birth should find mother and baby rested and ready to concentrate all their energies on facing the rigours of life and motherhood, respectively. It was, Honey thought, like the same scene viewed from opposite directions or seen in a mirror.

  Sandy had hurried out to keep an appointment for a golf match, the semi-finals of a minor club tournament. Even detective chief inspectors, Honey insisted, need exercise and relaxation. It seemed to her that she and Sandy were arriving at a crazy situation in which each was overly concerned with the other’s well-being even while their personal relationship seemed to be faltering; but while she was trying to keep Sandy active he was aiding June in trying to keep her passive. She would win in the end because her pregnancy would not last forever.

  Instead of hurrying out of bed, or as nearly hurrying as her swollen physique would allow, Honey lay back on the pillows to spend an idle moment considering what came next in the case of Dr McGordon. Her mind was eager to turn away from the purely passive wait for nature to take its course. No doubt when she had a kicking, squalling, nappy-wetting baby in her arms she would find plenty to keep her interested and occupied. Meanwhile, however, she had one outlet for her energies, mental if not physical. She had quite forgotten to ask Dodson what his plans might be for the weekend, but he was unlikely to make much progress on a Saturday. He had probably decided to take an overdue day or two off. But what if he came up cold?

  How else might a doctor dispose of a body? She really could not imagine a doctor, with a known face and a physique not accustomed to labour, carrying out a secret burial near his house. A doctor would be aware how frequently the results of such interments surfaced again. He would also know that advances in forensic science made it certain that carrying a body in his car would leave detectable and incriminating traces, but perhaps he was counting on the protection of a polythene shroud. The medical faculty of a university would have its own incinerator. A bribe to the chief technician, or to the staff at a crematorium, might work wonders, but at what risk! An acid bath seemed equally improbable. Did the Doctor have access to a boat for a burial at sea? June had not asked about any maritime connection. One – at least one – ingenious gentleman, she recalled, had hired one of the high-powered machines intended for reducing unwanted tree-branches to chips. He had passed a frozen corpse through it by night, directly into a river where the fish had done the rest of his work for him. Each of those options required transport. Had he hired a car or van? Thereabouts lay several avenues for Allan Dodson to explore. And next time that the Doctor’s Daimler went in for servicing, could she possibly take dust samples for study by the forensic scientists? But that, she recalled, would result in an account for the cost being passed to Mr Blackhouse. The thought of his overblown face in that event was tempting but not quite tempting enough.

  Or, of course, there could have been a fake accident. She must find out whether any female bodies remained unidentified.

  She realised, quite suddenly, that she had brooded for too long. June had crept silently up the stairs and now bumped her way into the bedroom carrying breakfast on a tray. Honey was going to have breakfast in bed whether she wanted it or not. In fact, she never wanted it. The strain on her neck and back and the load on her coccyx were too great. But June’s air of triumph, combined with pride more suited to a Labrador retrieving a shot pheasant, was too great to allow Honey to disappoint her. Honey thanked her fulsomely. June added that she would walk Pippa. Honey thanked her again, this time with more sincerity. June nodded graciously and withdrew.

  Honey drank the orange juice, swallowed the cereal and began on the bacon and egg. She was too preoccupied even to wish that it had been grapefruit juice, porridge and a kipper. Of course, the fact that McGordon was a doctor did not mean that his sin had to be medical. Doctors had been known to commit assaults, to forge cheques, to rob, to ravish, to defraud, to be peeping Toms or molesters or to commit any of the other sins to which laymen were given. But surely Detective Superintendent Blackhouse could not expect an inspector in an advanced stage of pregnancy, aided by a single constable borrowed from Traffic, to investigate the Doctor secretly for every possible infringement of the penal code? No, if they cleared him of medical transgressions she would tell Mr Blackhouse that he would have to come into the open, assemble a proper team and investigate along established lines or forget it. And if she ended up as an ex-police housewife and mother, so be it. That had probably been her destiny all along.

  Of course, none of the available crimes on her original list had been totally eliminated. Each had been shown to be unlikely; but they were still possible. Opinions could be mistaken. Informants could be wrong, deluding themselves or lying. She would have to go over the list again.

  The coffee was cold, the last of the toast had gone soggy. She felt slightly nauseous but it soon passed. She put the tray, on its beanbag, aside and began the process of preparing for the day.

  She arrived in the study while June was still out with Pippa. The house was silent. For company, she put on a CD of Antony Pay playing a Mozart clarinet concerto. Then, because it was too beautiful to keep to herself, she plugged in her headphones, detached one earpiece and tucked it into her waistband. The other earphone settled quite comfortably over her better ear and gave quite acceptable reproduction. She and her daughter could enjoy it together. The baby stopped kicking, which suggested that she was at least interested. Perhaps she would soon start to beat time with her little fists. Or even to conduct. Honey had been thinking of playing her set of Offenbach, but the thought of her unborn child attempting the Can Can was unacceptable.

  Music, as she had discovered years earlier, made demands on an entirely different part of her brain than did logical thought. She listened with pleasure and half a mind while she used the computer in the preparation of a list of possible lines of enquiry. The music ran out when the first draft of the list was almost complete.

  They never had exhausted the subject of smuggling. Had the Doctor – the two doctors, counting the Surgeon as a doctor – had they discovered a new method or subject for smuggling, something profitable enough to make the risk worthwhile? In the telephone directory under Turnhouse Airport she found Customs and Excise and she identified herself to the voice that answered her call. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘do you usually look into doctors’ medical bags or are they considered to be above suspicion?’

  The voice chuckled. ‘You have to be joking!’ it said, in an accent that stemmed from not more than twenty miles out of Glasgow and in tones of tolerant amusement. ‘We open anything that we find suspicious. Top of the list of things we find suspicious is whatever the public thinks we won’t open. And top of that list is a doctor’s medical bag. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘It does indeed,’ Honey said. She thanked her informant politely for dashing her hopes.

  ‘One moment,’ the voice said quickly. ‘If you have reason to believe that a doctor is about to bring something in his medical bag—’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. She disconnected and began to brood.

  She was roused from her reverie by sounds of the return of Pippa and June. Pippa made a boisterous entry to offer her mistress a morning greeting. There was a smell of the farmyard about her, but not bad enough to demand yet anothe
r bath. Honey sent her into the furthest corner of the room and told her to stay there.

  June was still in the doorway. Honey thanked her again. ‘When you see Mrs Deakin again,’ Honey said, ‘drag the conversation round to boats. Does the Doctor ever go out in somebody’s boat? Does he have an inflatable boat in the garage?’

  June promised to try. ‘But,’ she said, ‘how do I drag boats into the small talk? It’s not the kind of subject we discuss.’

  ‘Use your ingenuity. Does the Doctor like fishing or sailing? Or you could approach it by way of a man and his garage. We don’t have a garage here, but if we did Mr Sandy would have it so full of things he’d otherwise have to throw away that we wouldn’t be able to get even one car into it, let alone two. There would certainly be an inflatable boat. Does the Doctor clutter up his garage? Take it from there.’

  June went away, muttering to herself.

  The next item on Honey’s list was to obtain a summary of serious unsolved crimes over the past few years. Being officially on pre-maternity leave, she could hardly trouble Records for it, and such wholesale use of the National Computer would certainly draw attention. She would have to ask Sandy to get a printout for her. She added a note on her computer, reminding herself to have Dodson check on hirings of wood-chipping machines. The next . . . She picked up the phone.

  Felicia Aston’s answerphone kicked in. Felicia might be at church (in which case, Honey thought, knowing Felicia’s lifestyle, they would probably have to re-consecrate the place). More probably she and her husband had gone away, as they often did, for a weekend of golf and, it was readily admitted to their closer friends, wife-swapping. Honey left a message begging Felicia to call back at once.

  She scanned her list again. She was deciding that a weekend of unremitting boredom was facing her when the telephone demanded her attention. PC Dodson was calling her. He thought that he might be making progress but he wanted to consult.

  Honey’s spirits lifted. Saturday might be a bad day for demanding information over the phone from official but nonemergency bodies but it was often a good day for catching people who had decided to stay at home and catch up with the week’s chores. ‘Do you have your bike with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes indeed, Mrs Laird.’

  Honey glanced at her watch. She had risen late and time had flown while she was lost in thought. ‘It’s not far off lunchtime,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve made any arrangements. Come here and we’ll find you something to eat.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Dodson said with enthusiasm. Evidently he appreciated June’s catering. Honey had gathered that he lived in digs, catered for by a landlady whose idea of cuisine stopped at the door of the takeaway. Sandy was not expected home for lunch but she warned June that there would be a guest in his place.

  ‘That young Allan Dodson, I suppose,’ June said with great disinterest.

  Honey was always alert to nuances in June’s voice, especially if they signalled a new romance that might eventually lead to a loss of her services. ‘He has a girlfriend,’ Honey said.

  ‘Not now. She gave him the push.’

  Honey’s eyebrows went up. How did June know? ‘And you have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘Well,’ Honey said, ‘don’t you let him rush you off your feet. Allan’s a real charmer but his bow has as many strings as a harp.’ As she returned to the study she wondered if her last remark might not be taken as a challenge. Well, if their quest proved successful it would only be justice for Dodson to share June’s reward of a holiday on Crete. The two could celebrate together. For a moment, Honey felt envy. A little dalliance under a Mediterranean sun would not have gone amiss.

  To judge from the time elapsed, Dodson had had to come a distance, or else he had been caught up in football traffic. June allowed him a few minutes to get out of his leathers and make himself clean and tidy before she announced that lunch was ready. The only drink available was water. Honey noticed that Dodson was accorded the lion’s share of the quiche. Even so, it was not a generous feed.

  ‘You can fill up with biscuits and cheese,’ she suggested. ‘June has been reading articles about how important it is during pregnancy not to over- or under-eat, so whenever she thinks that she’s been giving me too much I know that I’m in for a period of starvation and vice versa. At least mealtimes are seldom boring. Now, what’ve you got for me?’

  ‘The website covering death certificates is back on line. Like you said, I looked out the details of certificates signed in the two months following Mrs McGordon going away.’ Dodson had already finished his quiche and was applying blue cheese to an oatcake. ‘Then I went to the central library and checked the electoral register. Some of the names and addresses weren’t there, but that could have been because people had moved house. So I compared those with the phone books. Luckily they had Edinburgh directories going back several years. Anybody who had a phone listed for two years or more had to be real. That left me with two names.’

  ‘Those names may have had unlisted numbers,’ Honey pointed out. ‘And not everyone has a landline phone listed in their own name. An elderly person may be living with a married daughter, for instance.’

  ‘There’s the rub. And it’s no use looking for overhead telephone wires because most of them are underground nowadays and if somebody gives up the landline phone Telecom may not take down any overhead wires until the next time they’re doing that sort of work in the area. I just couldn’t think of an omnibus sort of question that wouldn’t start anybody wondering.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I can either,’ said Honey. ‘Presumably the two deceased were both female, so I couldn’t pretend to be looking for the father of my child. I assume that you didn’t think to go back to Meadowbank House and ask for copies of their wills?’

  Dodson smacked his forehead, scattering oatcake crumbs. ‘That would have told us whether they were real or not. I am an idiot.’

  ‘You’re assuming that they didn’t die intestate. Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Honey said. ‘You’re not an idiot. Just slightly dim.’ (Dodson, who was gaining confidence, only smiled.) ‘To be honest, I’ve only just thought of it myself and we’re too late now, we’ll have to wait until Monday. If you have anything you want to do for the rest of the weekend, now’s your chance.’

  ‘I’ve got my teeth into this and I don’t want to let go now.’

  ‘All right. But now stop and think. Doctor . . . Body . . . Disposal. Take the odds against having arrived at the right houses and multiply by the odds against having guessed the right method. To dispose of a body this way, he’d have to use a vehicle, probably his own car; but if he’s going to take that risk he might as well drive to the west coast or to some lonely loch, weight her and sink her, or get access to an industrial incinerator. Despite the lapse of time, he still has the same car and the forensic scientists could probably give us a yea or nay. But we can’t go within a mile of them. Fun, isn’t it?’

  Honey recalled a character that was said to leap onto his horse and gallop off in all directions. Allan Dodson, who had been showing similar signs of over-eagerness, slumped. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We come up against all these queries which, in an ordinary case, I suppose you would usually answer by asking the right person the right question. But the people and questions we can ask are so limited that we might do better to consult a psychic.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of a psychic,’ Honey said. ‘We’ll add that at the bottom of the list. I do have one or two other lines to follow up, but my informant isn’t available today. Well, I’m not very prodigal and I’m not a son, but I shall arise and go to my father and say, “Dad, tell me about frauds.” Do you want to come as my driver?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ Dodson said, visibly slipping back into hyperactive mode. ‘Er – what do I do if you begin labour pains while we’re on the road?’

  ‘Unless you’ve done a first aid course in midwifery, you head for the nearest hosp
ital in a hurry,’ Honey said. ‘Pretend you’re chasing a motorist who parked on a yellow line or knocked over a traffic cone, or whatever gets your colleagues in Traffic to put the foot down.’

  ‘Going home for lunch, usually,’ said Dodson.

  Chapter Thirteen

  June showed a sad lack of faith in Allen Dodson’s ability to drive safely while conveying such a precious burden. She had a date to go next door for tea and cakes with Mrs Deakin but she offered to break the date and drive Honey wherever she wanted to go. Allan Dodson showed signs of ruffled feelings and Honey, knowing that a man will tolerate almost any insult except to his virility or his driving, supposed that any prospect of a romance in that quarter was definitely over. Even when June was satisfied that Honey had no intention of travelling on the back of Allen Dodson’s motorbike, June’s objections were by no means assuaged. When Honey explained that Dodson would drive her in the Range Rover June, who was coming to regard the Range Rover as her own personal transport, again questioned his competence until Honey pointed out that he was a qualified Traffic officer with all the necessary tests and courses behind him.

  Honey, while gathering up Pippa and the dog’s evening meal, explained to June, very firmly, that June’s job was to remain at home, try to extract certain fragments of information from Mrs Deakin; and then to explain his wife’s absence to Sandy, make sure that he took a hot bath after the chill of the golf course and provide him with a drink and a hot meal. June still had to be assured that Honey was warm enough and had her mobile phone with her and that Dodson was fully aware of the location of and preferred routes to the selected maternity home before she would move out of the way and allow the expedition to proceed.