Murder and Malpractice

by Mairi Chong

  Since Cathy’s visit to the nursing home, things at the practice had become more complicated. Although Brenda had tried to dull down any concern on her part, Cathy could see all too easily that the practice manager was unsettled.

  ‘It’s not really a problem if they do talk to him,’ Brenda had said, having just relayed the news to Cathy that James had been taken in once again for questioning, apparently this time to further discuss the police’s discovery of a very old bottle of paint stripper in his shed at home. ‘We know he’s innocent and the police will find that out too,’ she went on. ‘It’s unfortunate that he has to go in and explain himself but at least I’ve found a locum who can cover for now. Oh, and that young lad, Tom Jackson has asked to come back today. Although I thought he was a bit of a know-it-all at the beginning, he seems genuinely keen to help us out. If you don’t mind keeping half an eye on him?’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Cathy replied, automatically, but she wasn’t listening. She felt sick at the thought of poor James sitting alone in a police station again trying to talk his way out of the ghastly situation. Had the police checked any one of their sheds, surely, they might have found weedkiller, paint-thinner and a whole host of potentially lethal concoctions. Cathy said this to Brenda and the practice manager grimaced.

  ‘Maybe,’ Brenda had said, ‘but typical of Dr Longmuir, he had the old-fashioned stuff. It isn’t even sold nowadays because it’s too dangerous.’

  Cathy sighed. The situation seemed to get more and more impossible.

  Brenda had promised to phone the police later that morning to try to find out what was going on and Cathy set about her morning surgery with a heavy heart, but renewed determination to clear her partner’s name. She saw Jackson in passing and told him to pop in if he had any queries. Perhaps she had misjudged the young doctor after all.

  She returned from house visits that morning, having taken the majority of calls to spare the locum who was unfamiliar with the area. Having asked Brenda who said that there was still no news, she set about some much-needed tidying up. The pile of insurance company doctor reports had been growing larger and larger.

  She still thought hard about what Dr Clark had said the previous day as she went about clearing the insurance claims. She felt humbled but a bit of a hypocrite in truth. She found that rather than confirming his guilt, the suggestion that James had assisted the death of his wife, had made her, if anything, more sympathetic towards him. She was sure that if the police found out, however, they would be unlikely to take a similar view.

  She was coming to the halfway point, having already quickly run through the most straight-forward insurance claims. When she came across Irene’s name, Cathy did a double-take. It was true that usually, they encouraged their staff to seek an alternative practice as treating a colleague was often fraught with difficulties. Brenda had allowed this policy to waver over the years however, and Cathy knew that they were doctors to Bert and his family, and both Julie and Michelle on the reception desk also. This was the first time that Cathy had come across Irene’s notes.

  She scanned the claim quickly. It seemed that Irene had been in a minor car accident some months before. When Cathy thought about it, she seemed to remember the nurse referring to something of the kind, but having been off sick herself at the time, Cathy must have missed the incident itself. Irene appeared to be challenging a refusal of payout for whiplash injury. Cathy logged onto her computer and keyed in Irene’s date of birth as stated on the insurance form. The company had asked for a second doctor’s opinion. Cathy read briefly through the most recent entries. It seemed that having initially seen Linda with the first presentation of neck pain following the accident, she had then seen Mark. Cathy’s heart sank as she read what her colleague had said about Irene. ‘Untenable claim,’ he had typed. ‘Vague symptoms and little evidence of distress to individual or ability to undertake day-to-day tasks.’ It put Cathy in a difficult position. She could hardly ignore Mark’s appraisal of the situation, and why on earth was Irene making such a claim in the first place? Were things so tight, that she was forced to, even when ethically it seemed she had no right to do so? Cathy knew she would have to have a quiet word with Irene and explain her position.

  But quite apart from this new and worrying issue, by late afternoon, Cathy was growing more and more concerned to hear news of James. She had been through to Brenda’s office and had asked her several times if the police had been in touch. Brenda’s act, if that was what it was, was wearing a little thin.

  ‘Well, shall I call them?’ Cathy had asked in exasperation, having met Brenda at the front reception after finishing a number of telephone consultations.

  Brenda had rolled her eyes. ‘By all means, but you’ll get the same snooty call-operator who’ll tell you nothing. Honestly, it’s bad enough as it is without you hounding me every second of the day as well.’

  Standing in reception, a sudden peel of laughter echoed through the hall. Michelle, who had been sitting at the front desk, tutted.

  ‘Not grieving that much is she?’ she said.

  Brenda looked uncomfortable. ‘Michelle, be careful,’ the practice manager said.

  ‘I know, I know,’ the young girl went on, ‘but really Brenda, how can you laugh like that and then be in floods of tears the next minute? One of our doctors, her boyfriend, is dead, and another of our doctors is suspected of killing him. Honestly, how can anyone laugh?’

  ‘Everyone deals with grief in their own way,’ Brenda said stiffly. ‘I think we have to be understanding of one another at the moment. We’re all clearly struggling,’ she said looking at Cathy. ‘The worst thing we can do is start bickering amongst ourselves. Stressful times make people act out of character.’

  ‘Well that’s just it,’ said Julie, now coming through from the filing-room and joining Michelle at the front desk. ‘It’s not out of character, is it? She’s always been superficial. I overheard that young trainee doctor asking her out or offering to go over to her place to keep her company earlier. You know, that new Dr Jackson? Disgusting. Poor Dr Hope’s only just died and she’s flirting with the first man to come along.’

  ‘And I know for a fact that she thinks Dr Hope’s left her the house,’ Michelle said.

  ‘You can’t go around saying that!’ Brenda seemed genuinely horrified.

  ‘It’s true,’ Michelle said, twirling a pen between her fingertips. ‘I heard her on the phone the day before to some pal of hers. Chatting away, she was. Not a care in the world.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to have poisoned him,’ Julie snorted.

  Cathy watched as Julie’s face fell, and turning along with the rest of the gathering, she saw Tracy standing only ten feet away. She had come out of her room and was holding a pile of patient records. Her face was cold and frightening.

  ‘Well, at least I now know where we all stand,’ the young practice nurse said, inching closer to the group.

  ‘Let me just say that I did not murder Mark, if that’s what you’ve all been thinking. You must think I’m a fool, but I know more than you could ever imagine about what happened.’ Tracy turned and looked from Cathy to Brenda, and then back again. Her cheeks were ugly, red blotches. ‘I saw what was missing from his room, you know? Someone in this practice had better be very careful about what they are saying. When Dr Longmuir is released, the police will be looking for the real murderer and I might just have a name for them.’

  With that, she spun on her heel and retraced her steps back to her room. They all winced as they heard the door slam.

  32

  All that afternoon, Cathy went over and over the silly girl’s words. She found herself pacing her room long after her patients and many of the practice staff had left, trying to make sense of it all. Several times she thumped her head with the heel of her hand in utter desperation. ‘Think,’ she told herself. ‘For God’s sake, think.’

  She was still to hear any word from James. She had left easily a dozen messages on his an
swer machine, asking him to return her calls as soon as he was out of police custody, no matter what hour. Cathy wondered how Brenda was. She hadn’t come in to say goodbye for the evening. The practice manager had seemed mortified by Michelle’s words, and by Tracy’s reaction on overhearing them. Even Irene, who had appeared at the desk seemingly simultaneously with Tracy, had gone white as a sheet. Cathy wondered if there was any truth in what the office girls had said about Tom and Tracy. Cathy felt that she knew so little about either one of them. She had been so caught up in her own day-to-day routine that she had missed any signs of warmth between them. Tom had only been here for a week or so before Dr Hope had died. None of it really made any sense to her, and what had Tracy meant by what she said?

  Cathy eventually gave up and slowly began to tidy her room, logging out of the computer system and turning off her light. She collected her doctor’s bag and jacket, but seeing that by her sink were three cups that she had amassed over the course of the day, she decided to nip upstairs to the kitchen with them before leaving. The building felt quite deserted, although Cathy knew that there must still be someone there, or the corridor lights would be switched off. It was one of Brenda’s bugbears, leaving the lights on. She had scolded the doctors about it a dozen times before and had told them that they should look at the running costs of such a large building as this. As she moved towards the stairs, Cathy thought she heard a bang and then a noise from outside, perhaps in the carpark. She stood for a moment listening and then dismissed it as simply her overactive imagination. She was jumpy and overreactive. It made sense that she would be after everything that had happened.

  Cathy didn’t notice anything when she first walked into the half-darkened coffee room carrying her three mugs to the sink. But as she turned, she froze. For a split second, she had a sense that something was very wrong.

  It was then that she saw. The figure was huddled; partially concealed by the table in the corner. Cathy moved stiffly across the room, but without needing to touch her, it was clear that she was dead. Steeling herself and turning the body gently over, Cathy gasped as she looked at the once-beautiful face of their practice nurse, Tracy. She had been stabbed. What looked like the handle of a kitchen knife, was sticking out from her chest. A pool of blood spread out from the wound, across her nurses’ tunic and onto the coffee room carpet.

  Cathy stayed crouched beside the girl and in horrified disbelief, she studied Tracy’s face, as if for the first time. The heavy powder of make-up to the girl’s cheeks contrasted with the twisted grimace of lipstick gave the body a grotesque clown-like state. Tracy’s eyes were wide, but the creases in her face, that must surely have been present as the pain and realisation of the attack dawned upon her, were all but gone.

  Cathy wasn’t quite sure what happened after that. Discovering Tracy’s body was very different to finding Mark. On that terrible day, she had a job to do, and thought that she could potentially save a life. This time, she could see there was nothing to be done and almost as a self-protective mechanism, she shut down.

  She remembered hearing herself scream. And then Bert had suddenly been there with her, hauling her up and guiding her out of the room and downstairs to her own consulting room once more. He had disappeared for a moment and inexplicably returned with something for her to drink. She did so without thinking and gagged at the strong, unexpected taste of whisky.

  ‘Best medicine for a shock,’ Bert said and disappeared, presumably to call the police. They had then waited together.

  ‘No need to go up there again,’ Bert had said several times. ‘Better to stay put and wait.’

  Cathy hadn’t spoken. She sat hunched and unable to move. She had no idea how long it had taken for the police to come, but when they did, they had found her with her fists clenched on the arms of her chair, her knuckles white, her eyes tightly shut. Bert had gone to the back door to let them in. They hadn’t made her return upstairs but had moved her to one of the police cars.

  It was warm in the back of the car. She had unclenched her fists and looked at her hands. They hurt and were covered in blood. Four small incisions were on each of her palms from where her own nails had cut the flesh. She studied them for some time, flicking the tiny flaps of skin back and forth.

  The police had explained that she was needed at the station for questioning. Better to do it there than in the back of the car, they said. Cathy hadn’t argued with anything. She felt completely empty. She had nothing left inside. At the police station, she heard all that they had said to her. It was only her and Bert left there in the practice, they told her. Everyone else had gone home. She answered all their questions, hearing her own voice almost as an outsider might. She was mildly interested in what she was saying but not enough to fully listen. Her mouth was moving but her words were like a droning noise. She had no feeling. She should have felt sad, or angry or upset but she had nothing at all. Just emptiness.

  Cathy must have slept at the police station. She couldn’t remember, but Suzalinna was there to collect her and take her home. The tips of her fingers were covered in dried ink. They must have asked for her fingerprints, but she couldn’t remember that either.

  ‘My car?’ she asked Suzalinna. ‘It’s at the practice.’

  ‘Sorted,’ her friend answered, as she directed her to her own car which waited in a space close to the station.

  ‘She was dead. Stabbed,’ Cathy said and Suzalinna glanced sideways, her face full of concern. ‘She had a knife in her. I saw it,’ Cathy went on, her voice rising. ‘Mark, and now her. Both dead.’

  ‘I know, I know but it’s alright now,’ Suzalinna said as she opened the car door and ushered her in.

  ‘Why are they letting me go? What if it was me? Maybe it was me,’ Cathy said, fighting off Suzalinna’s attempts to fasten a seatbelt around her. ‘Did I kill them? I was there. Why was I first to get to them?’ Cathy went on. She turned hurriedly to her friend. ‘Suzalinna. It was me. I think it was me.’

  Suzalinna’s words cut her like a slap to the face. ‘Jesus Christ, Cathy,’ she said angrily. ‘Jesus. You need to sleep. Stop struggling and put the bloody seatbelt on and let me get you home. They said you were talking nonsense.’

  Cathy was so shocked by this sudden outburst that she forgot to fight off her friend’s assistance and sat meekly and allowed herself to be restrained.

  ‘They are letting you go, darling,’ Suzalinna went on, more gently, ‘because Bert, your handyman from the practice, has already helped them with their enquiries. The real killer was seen. Bert saw them running downstairs and out, although, at the time, he didn’t realise that anything suspicious had occurred. You were simply a witness, darling. The first to arrive on the scene. Bert saw who really killed her, and presumably Mark too.’

  ‘Who did Bert see then?’ Cathy said. ‘Who was the killer?’

  Suzalinna looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s not good darling. The police said it was Fraser, the pharmacist.’

  33

  Over the preceding days, Fraser had been going through a period of mental anguish comparable to no other in his already turbulent existence. The day of his altercation with Jackson up in the coffee room, now seemed quite distant, although of course, it was not.

  Having drunk Jackson’s coffee, Fraser, confused and frightened, returned to his room to await the results. By the second hour, he knew that he was not going to die. The realisation came, as a bitter disappointment. If it had been the poisoned mug, it must since have been washed and all traces of the hydrocarbon, removed. Fraser still couldn’t understand how the mug might still be there unless the police had returned it, but why would they, he reasoned, if it was part of a murder investigation? Fraser sat for some time contemplating death and wondering what on earth had happened that day. Finally, he tortured himself with how those final moments must have felt for poor Dr Hope.

  And then of course, there was Tracy. Fraser had thought that he was one of the last to leave the building that fateful evening. Stupidl
y, he had gone upstairs, and when he discovered the girl lying dead, he had run to his room without raising the alarm. What he had been thinking, he didn’t know, but for that moment, he was sure that he couldn’t be the first to find her. Already he felt that the net was closing in on him and it was only a matter of time before Jackson intimated his guilt, which he was sure he had given away through his bizarre behaviour that day. Fraser recalled the nurse’s lifeless form. Oh God. He had then spun on his heel and left. Left poor, fragile Dr Moreland to discover her. When he heard the doctor’s screams, he had got out of the place as quickly as he could, hoping to pass unseen.

  Sarah had been waiting for him at home. He knew though, that it was only a matter of time before the police would arrive. The heaviest burden, throughout all of this, had been the need for vigilance. Fraser had found it exhausting, trying to keep up an outward appearance of calm, but inwardly festering inside with the knowledge that he had killed another man, watching everything he did or said. He had wanted to confide in Sarah a thousand times over, to tell her that he had made the gravest of mistakes. Oh, what a relief it would have been to unburden himself and to hear her sympathetic response, but increasingly he realised that for the very reason that he loved Sarah, he could not tell her. She was the epitome of innocence and kindness. If he told her what he had done, he might shatter this forever. Their love for one another would change and warp. If she stood by him, he would endlessly feel indebted to her; a fate he decided to be far worse than death itself.