‘I do all the same though,’ Mike said gloomily. ‘I dinna like being in the Guv’s bad books.’
‘Who says you are?’
‘He hasna said I’m not.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Mike, how could he? He hasn’t been anywhere near you this past week!’ She sharpened then. ‘Has he?’
Mike sighed so gustily at the other end of the phone that she almost felt his breath on her ear. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But–’
‘No buts about it.’ George was bracing. ‘Take it from me. He’s not blaming you for anything. And I’m grateful to you for helping me out the way you did. I told you that. Listen, Mike, enough of that. Tell me about this ID.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, those fingerprints we collected in the mortuary paid off. She was on record.’
‘She had form?’
‘Sort of,’ Mike said. ‘Nothing much. There was a nasty affair about three years ago – a Tom had her throat cut in the Whitechapel Road area. They did a sweep on a lot of them and this girl got caught up in that. Not that she was an ordinary Tom. She was an uptowner, worked the big hotels. Very expensive.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘Her name was Shirley Candrell. Aged twenty-nine, or so her documents said.’
‘That would be about right.’ George narrowed her eyes, remembering. ‘Going by what I saw at the PM.’
‘OK. Well, she came from Burnley in Lancashire, about fifteen years ago. Runaway teenager. But she did well for herself. Left considerable assets, I’ll say that. The father, who’s her next of kin and not too well off, is sitting looking at an inheritance of close on a hundred thousand – not counting the house. She owned that, or would have done once the mortgage was paid off. That’ll bring in another bit of cash, what with her insurance.’
George sharpened. ‘Is that still valid? In a case of arson?’
‘Good question. Well, at the very least he’s inherited a hundred K from her. Those are her cash assets.’
‘It sounds as though we’re in the wrong business, Mike.’
‘It wasna all the wages of sin, you understand. Or not precisely. She played in a lot of hard porn videos. That was how she got caught up in that sweep a few years ago when she was fingerprinted. The girl who had been killed was in the cast as well. Our Shirley was by way of being the star, though. She could do tricks with her – Well, never mind. But apparently she’s a major loss to the industry.’ His tone had become very dry. ‘She did well as a producer as well as a performer. Was on royalties and all sorts. That’s where the money came from.’
‘How did you get all this stuff?’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of detail in this, more than you’d expect to get from a fingerprint match, surely?’
He chuckled. ‘Inspector Dudley’s done well. Actually it was he had the notion of interviewing every girl who was fingerprinted in that sweep. That’s why this has taken so long – we had to find them. And some of them were glad enough to talk, times being as hard as they are. We learned a lot from them. So there you are. She’s a Tom in a decent line of business, made a lot of money on the side in videos, and I dare say that could be one of the reasons she got her fingers burned.’
‘Roop thought of doing that?’ George said. ‘He’s not so … Well, well.’
‘Not so daft, you’d be thinking? You’d be thinking right. Listen, Dr B., I have to go. Got places to visit and questions to ask. I’ll keep in touch, since no one else is. As long as you don’t drop me in it…’
‘Would I do that?’ she said. ‘Thanks, Mike.’ She hung up and sat staring into space for a while.
The frustration of not being part of the enquiry was biting hard again. The last week had been hectically busy on hospital business; Ellen Archer had brought her a draft document to work on, which made a strong plea for all pathological services for St Dymphna’s and any other small specialist hospitals in the area, such as St Morwenna’s Foot Hospital and the dental place over at Hackney, to be based at Old East, and she spent a large part of two days on that. It cheered Ellen greatly when she read George’s new version and she congratulated her warmly on it.
‘If the devils don’t accept this, then they’ve no right to be called a Trust Board,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s the most sensible thing I’ve seen. The next meeting is in a couple of weeks, I gather – they’ve changed the date because of summer holidays or something. I’ll let you know, and try to see if they’ll let us present this ourselves so that we can argue our corner. I’m determined they’re not going to strip us of our lab.’ And she went away busily to engage in even more of her wheelings and dealings, leaving George to cope with her exhausted, lack-lustre staff and their heavy workload.
The weather was part of the problem. It became hot and stayed hot and the humidity in the department rose steadily.
Everything they touched felt sticky and they themselves were clammy and miserable. They fixed gimcrack air-cooling systems involving fans blowing in front of bowls of ice filched from the mortuary refrigerators, but that just resulted in papers blowing about and getting into the wrong order and even more bad temper. By the end of the week George was in no mood to think of anything but the possibility of turning her back on the whole boiling lot of them; the lab, the staff and even Gus (who had been totally silent) and legging it away to some distant beach where she could sleep and swim and sleep again. All day.
But that was out of the question for her as the holiday season descended on Old East. One by one key people vanished on their summer breaks and running the place became much more complicated than usual. Consultants in virtually all departments chose to run twice their usual clinics ‘because I’ll be away for the next three weeks’ and dumped a vastly increased amount of work in the path. lab in consequence. The lab staff were having their own holidays now of course, and that meant she was chronically shorthanded.
Sheila, whose own holiday wasn’t due until September, worked at twice her usual rate, yet without any loss of efficiency which should have helped George but in fact made matters worse because she became particularly fractious. She never stopped complaining to anyone who would listen and particularly to George, who had to use every atom of self-control she had not to lose her temper and send her off in a huff for ever. The last person George could afford to lose was Sheila and the person she least wanted to have around was Sheila. It was not a comfortable situation.
It was Alan who saved the day, and she warmed to him greatly as a result. He took Sheila out to dinner one night, much to everyone’s surprise (and not a little gossip) but clearly with Jane’s full consent, for she was serene about it. The next day, when they came in, separately, everyone was agog to know what the enemy had been like, but neither would say. All anyone could see was that Sheila was happy and very gracious to both Alan and Jane, and Alan was treated by everyone with added respect and approval in consequence. So the department became a little less fraught than it had been, though still under great pressure.
But still at the back of George’s mind, as she went through her busy days of post-mortems, court appearances and the eternity of heavy paperwork that accompanied her activities whatever they were, was Gus. His silence was understandable, but it hurt, and she would go home each day to her little flat, which was as stifling and uncomfortable in summer as it was cosy in the winter, and sit there in a thin shift desultorily watching repeats on television and reading back copies of the medical journals that she had allowed to pile up all through the spring and even as far back as March. By the end of the week she felt as though her head had been freshly stuffed with the most up-to-date information on her speciality, and a lot more besides, yet had none of the comfortable smugness she usually felt when she managed to catch up on her reading. She just felt lonely and uneasy and irritable.
But then, one Saturday evening almost two weeks after she had seen him in Poplar, he phoned. She had been sitting in her bath, in cold water, considering whether it was worth making the effort to get out, dry herself and dress so that
she could go over to the swimming pool and get some exercise. But the place would be alive with children, she thought, on so hot an evening, and did she really want to make the effort just to have them get in her way? The phone shrilled in the living room and she thought of letting it ring, but couldn’t. Whenever had she been able to ignore a ringing telephone, dammit? So she climbed out of the bath and with her wet hair streaming down her back and without bothering to wrap herself in a towel, went to answer it, leaving wet prints on the carpet all the way.
‘George?’ Gus was jubilant. He sounded like his old self and she caught her breath in excitement. ‘George, me old darlin’. I’ve bin and gorn and cracked it, I swear I have! How’s that for a turn-up for the books? I can see just what’s going on and how. I don’t know all the who’s yet, but just you watch me. I’ll get’em, see if I don’t!’
‘Gus, really?’ she said and laughed with sheer pleasure. ‘Gus, that is fabulous news. It means I might see something of you?’
‘Every damned bit there is, sweetheart!’ he crowed. ‘In full working order, too. Oh, George, isn’t it the business, though? It all sort of – well, I’ll have to explain it when I’ve got a week to do it in. Right now, dolly chops, get your best bib and tucker out. I’m on my way!’
‘Honestly? You’re free tonight?’
‘I’m back in the world of the living, right now, glory be. I’ll file my notes on Monday – that’ll be soon enough. I can afford to take the weekend. And take it I shall. Look, I have to drop in at the nick but I’ll go home first and duffy myself up for you and pack a toothbrush – if I may?’
She chuckled. ‘Oh, sir,’ she said with all the shock she could put in her voice. ‘How forward you are!’
‘Yeah, but at least I’ll have clean teeth when I get there. Like I say, I’ll go home and get cleaned up, pop in the nick and I’ll be with you – oh, around eight. How does that sound?’
‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Terrific. Great. I’ll tell you what else when you get here.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ he said. ‘Pant pant, my fangs are showing. Cor, but what a night lies ahead!’
She spent a lot of time getting ready. It was just half past six now and she had the chance to do something special for him. So she dried her hair and pinned it up into a fetching heap on top of her head – and for once it was obedient and went into exactly the place she wanted it to, without any protest – and chose her clothes with care. The oatmeal linen with the split skirt and the tunic top was both cool and sexy, she decided, and preened a little in front of the mirror when she put it on. The weather had been so hot and the sun so strong that she had somehow got a tan without realizing it, just on her walks to and from work on the days when the buses were too full and too smelly to be tolerated. She looked good and she knew it.
She busied herself in the kitchen then, setting out little nonsenses for them to eat with the bottle of champagne that had been lying forlornly in the fridge for weeks now, waiting for just such an opportunity, and arranged it all on a big platter: prawn wontons; smoked salmon rouleaux stuffed with cream cheese (thank heaven for Marks&Spencer, she thought), and strips of carrot and celery to use with her own dips – blue cheese using the recipe Vanny had given her when she had first left home, and guacamole and aïoli.
She even had time before eight to run around the flat, tidying and dusting it, to please his fastidious eye, and to the Busy Lizzie plant that obediently perked up within ten minutes in its usual amazing way, and then, eager and ready, sat down on her sofa to wait for him. Ten to eight. It wouldn’t be long now.
At half past eight she was angry. By nine she was frightened He had been so sure he would be with her by eight and he’d just made a breakthrough in a difficult case. Could it be that whatever he had identified was making trouble for him? Could someone have tried to hurt him? Her mind ran away with her: she saw Gus in a quiet alley, saw people creeping up on him, beating him up; saw herself called to the scene unwittingly as the pathologist; and then saw herself at his funeral. The whole thing moved across her mind in a matter of a fraction of a second, but it left her shaking and almost in tears. Where was he? She had been walking to the window to stare down into the street over and over again ever since quarter past eight; now, after forty-five minutes, she was glued there.
‘Another five minutes and I go to the nick to find him,’ she thought. ‘I’ll have to.’
She shrank from phoning the police station. If he had been held up by consultations with the Superintendent or something of that sort (and her logical mind told her, despite her emotional responses, that that was the most likely reason for his delay) he would be mortified if she chased him like an anxious mother hen. But if she happened to be waiting for him outside when he came out perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad?
But she dismissed that too. He’d hate to find her there. He had said he was on his way to her, and he’d arrive. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d been held up by work, after all. It was the essence of a copper’s life, she told herself. Just as is mine, really. She made herself sit down on the sofa again.
It was ten past nine when at last she heard his key in her lock. She shot to her feet and ran out to the miniscule hallway to greet him, all her fear forgotten. It was dark out there – it always was, for there were only doors that led off it, no windows, so she couldn’t quite see his face as she seized his arm and lifted her face to kiss him.
‘Oh, Gus, I’ve been so silly and frantic! I’m so glad you’re here. Come on through, honey. I’ll get you a drink and –’
She stopped. Now that they were in the living room she could see him more clearly in the last of the golden light of the summer evening. He looked neat enough; he had clearly, as he said he would, gone home and changed. He was wearing one of his light summer suits and a sparkling white shirt and had tied a neat if insouciant bow tie at the neck. But now the knot was untied and the ends of the tie dangled forlornly against his shirt, which was open against his thick neck. She could see a pulse beating there, rapidly and heavily, and she stared at it and then at his face. He was white and drawn and she caught her breath.
‘Gus, whatever is it? What happened? Honey, you look – Gus?’
He was staring at her with eyes so wide he was almost showing a rim of white above the iris, and that gave him a slightly demented air. She wanted to shake him to make him talk, to look less agitated. But she stood very still, only setting her hands on his upper arms to hold him, and looking at him closely. ‘Gus?’ she said more gently.
His voice was shaky and he had to cough before he could speak properly. ‘I’ve been suspended.’
She blinked, startled, and shook her head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that. I’ve been sent off duty, not to return until –until –’ His face crumpled and she let go of his arm and pulled him close, holding him tightly with her own hands interlaced across his shoulder blades.
‘Until what, sweetheart?’
‘Until they investigate the charges against me,’ he said huskily. ‘I’m supposed to have been acting corruptly in the matter of fifteen thousand pounds paid into my account last week. Oh, George, what on earth shall I do?’
16
She managed to settle him to something approaching his usual commonsensical self by means of plying him with food and drink; not the champagne and nibbles, both of which languished unwanted in the kitchen, but a big pot of tea, made strong and dark the way he liked it, and a plate of hot buttered toast. He had told her once that for him tea and toast were the most abiding memories of his childhood when he’d been happy and secure, and she, acting almost instinctively, didn’t ask him now, but just provided it.
At first he waved it away, but she was insistent so he took some and then seemed to discover his appetite and wolfed the lot. She watched him in silence and, when he leaned back on the sofa again, replete, took the tray away and then came to sit beside him again.
‘OK, honey,’ she said. �
��Let’s get the story clear. What happened at the nick?’
He sighed and set his head back on the sofa. It was getting dim in the little room now; the light outside had dwindled to a dark duck-egg blue as the sun disappeared behind her little block of flats. ‘I was just leaving my notes on my desk when the Super came in. He had someone with him, bloke I didn’t know. Then another one arrived. I did know him – Dave Anderson, used to be with us, went off to Tintagel House.’
‘Tintagel?’
He sighed again. ‘It’s the headquarters building where the CIB operates. In Vauxhall Bridge Road. I’ll be seeing a fair bit of them now, I reckon.’ He was silent for a while and she left him to it. He started to speak again of his own volition after a few moments.
‘Anyway, Dave had gone on to the Complaints Investigation Bureau at Tintagel House and when I saw him I didn’t even twig then. I mean, why should I, for Christ’s sake? I’ve done nothing I shouldn’t – no one knows that better than I do. I’ve got the cleanest conscience a man can have.’ He laughed then, an ugly little sound. ‘Like I told them afterwards, it’s easy for me to be a good clean boy. I don’t make judgements about other blokes, because it’s easy for me. I’ve got enough money already, thanks very much. I don’t have to pull any strokes to get gelt, do I? But they didn’t see it my way.’
Again he brooded for a while and then seemed to burst into words. ‘I just couldn’t believe it! I told ’em if it was a joke it was a bloody bad one, and even slapped old whatsaname on the back. Thought they’d set me up for a laugh on account of I’ve done so well so far – and then I remembered they couldn’t know how well I’d done. I hadn’t put my report in and wouldn’t till Monday. I’d only just brought my notes in. And what with Whitman looking like a week-old codfish and Dave not able to look me in the eye and the other bloke all icy and – Well, I knew then it wasn’t a joke. But I couldn’t think what else it could be.’
This time she had to break the silence. ‘What happened then?’ she asked gently.
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