by Mairi Chong
Bert followed her slowly down the corridor. She shut the door behind the old man and gestured for him to sit. It seemed to take him an eternity to fold his frame into a seated position, but despite his ailing physical form, Cathy noted his mental vigour. He grinned at her.
‘More detecting?’ he asked conspiratorially.
Cathy grimaced. ‘They all think I’m going crazy in this place; both Brenda and James now, but I think I’m onto something. I still don’t know how, but I thought you might have seen.’
Bert returned her gaze steadily, but didn’t answer.
‘Bert, the metal cleaner in your cupboard,’ she went on. ‘You had been using it to scrub the graffiti on the doctors’ name plaque out at the front there. Had it been moved at all, or had any of it been used? I feel sure that’s where the poison came from. It had to be from here.’
The old man rubbed his chin. The rough skin on stubble sounded like sandpaper. ‘Maybe moved, I’d say,’ the old man said contemplatively, ‘But sometimes stuff moves around though in that cupboard.’
Cathy had hoped for more positive confirmation, but she continued. ‘Right, so it could have been moved though, and your cupboard door? Is it open at all times? No lock?’
‘I like to lock it up sometimes and keep people from poking and taking things,’ Bert said. There was a long pause and then he announced loudly: ‘Someone’s had some of my custard creams!’
Cathy sighed. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all.
‘Bert,’ she continued with an air of desperation now. ‘I know the police have asked you all of this, but just tell me again about what you saw the night Tracy was killed. You were still here. It was just the two of us. You said it was Fraser that you saw, is that right?’
‘I saw him, like I told them, I saw that Fraser lad leaving, just after you had gone upstairs. I poked my head out and saw you going up. That was when he left.’ Bert said.
There was no arguing with the certainty of his evidence. ‘But Bert,’ Cathy went on. ‘There’s a chance there could have been someone else. Wait a minute. As I was going upstairs, I heard a sound outside in the carpark. Do you think you might have seen the person who left before I went up? You see, I’m not sure it was just you, me and Fraser in the building. I think someone else had just slipped out the back door. I’m positive I heard someone. Might they have driven off when I was carrying on having discovered Tracy’s body?’
Having said this, Cathy found herself holding her breath. She watched the old man as he scratched his forearm.
‘Maybe,’ he said, but he suddenly seemed to grow impatient with the conversation ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I didn’t say the pharmacist had killed her. It was those stupid policemen who jumped to that reasoning. I suppose maybe someone else did go past but I’m not saying anything now, not even to you,’ he said leaning forward. ‘You saw what happened to the nurse girl when she said too much. I’m old, but I’m no fool.’
‘But if you know Fraser wasn’t the last person to see Tracy, then why would you let the police take him in for questioning? You haven’t told them the full story. Someone else is free to kill again and Fraser might be wrongly accused.’
‘Look, Doctor,’ Bert said with finality. ‘Here’s the honest truth. I saw the young lad leaving that evening. But the fact is, I didn’t see anything else because I was busy tidying my cupboard. The next thing I knew was you were screaming and hollering out. That’s the truth, I swear.’
Cathy was utterly defeated. She didn’t know what to believe now. The old man got up to go.
‘How’s your wife doing Bert?’ Cathy asked, almost as an afterthought.
‘Fine’ he said, contradictorily shaking his head.
He shuffled past her as she held open the door, and coughed twice, it was dry rasping cough and she smelt the stale, sweet coffee on his breath.
It was only then, that it finally dawned on her and Cathy realised how Mark must have been poisoned.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ she said aloud.
Bert snorted, unaware of her sudden realisation. She could have kissed the man. And she, Cathy, had had the answer all the time for she would have been the only person in a position to notice. She was the one working on Mark’s airway during the resuscitation attempt. What a fool she had been. Cathy now knew with certainty what Tracy had seen missing from Mark’s room, a comment that had sealed the nurse’s own fate. She knew how Mark had been poisoned and the reason for that particular way of killing him meant that only four people could have done it. Before anything else, she had to speak to Fraser.
37
During the hours of isolation, while locked in a cell awaiting his next round of questions, Fraser had found himself thinking of his parents. His mother was now quite infirm and it was many months since he had last communicated with her. For this, he felt immense sorrow. As he sat waiting, his mind returning to his childhood and his mother’s encouraging words. He replayed memories that he had long since forgotten and wept for the unconditional love his mother had felt, that he had not repaid or recognised. He thought also of his father, now passed many years. The irony of his father’s profession in law, and Fraser’s current predicament, was not lost even on Fraser. He sat and spoke with the dead man and begged for his absolution but above all, his guidance.
When the police finally came and told him that currently, he would face no charges, Fraser was stunned. He was led from the cell and after collecting his belongings, he left the police station, his path tentative and uncertain. It felt as if he was learning to walk for the first time.
He let himself into his home, but he knew that his job, his relationship, and the life he had previously known, was long since lost. Despite this realisation, he found himself, feeling lighter. The police had more work to do, they had told him. As yet, nothing he had said, fitted with the facts as they knew them. Fraser didn’t understand what this had meant. How many times he had to tell them that he had accidentally killed a man, he didn’t know.
Sarah had repeatedly tried to call his mobile, but knowing that he could not face her, he had ignored it. She had come to the house in the end, of course, and let herself in with the key he had given her.
Standing in the hallway, she had waited and then gone to him with her arms outstretched. ‘Fraser? Oh, my poor darling. What did they do to you? Fraser, please? They’ve released you. I knew it was all a mistake.’
She took another step towards him, but he turned, unable to look at her face.
‘Fraser?’ she repeated, her voice cracking. ‘Talk to me.’
He shuffled through to the living room and she followed.
‘I’ll make you something to eat,’ she said. ‘Let’s get the heating on and make the place a bit more comfortable. I’m not due in today, I’ve already called them to say.’
He allowed her to fuss in the kitchen, and listened to her chatter, of how he’d feel a good deal better after something warm was in his stomach and he’d had a hot shower. But when the practicalities were taken care of, and they sat together, he knew he couldn’t mislead her any longer.
He looked at her with great sadness. Of all the things he regretted, deceiving her had been the most dreadful. As he attempted to compose himself, she smiled shyly, encouragingly, and his heart could have broken. What he had to tell her, would shatter both her innocence, and her love for him, but he must do it all the same.
The house was still when she left. Fraser looked around the place. The colours from the matching cushions that Sarah and he had chosen together, seemed to have faded along with his hopes.
Fraser barely realised himself shakily moving about during those solitary hours. Now that his conscience was clear though, he could face death, if not easily, then gladly. He sat in the front room for some time, with his eyes closed. The sunlight was coming through the branches of the tree outside, and the warmth played a lattice across his pale countenance.
It was here in his favourite chair, that his exhausted
body rested.
When the doorbell rang, Fraser did not move. The bell rang again, more insistently and then someone began beating at the front door with their fists.
38
Cathy was about to smash a window. She had run around the side of the house and peeping in the front, she had seen him. His figure looked unnaturally stiff and with a feeling of horrified disbelief that she might be about to discover a third body, Cathy raised her hand to the pane of glass. She hadn’t thought of the pain of doing so, but thankfully instinct made her momentarily pause and then she saw with great relief, Fraser’s eyelids flutter. Oh, thank God, he was alive.
‘Open the door, Fraser,’ she yelled. At first, she thought that she might still be too late, for he closed his eyes once more. ‘Now!’ she screamed, ‘or I’m smashing my way in.’
Slowly, Fraser seemed to shift his weight, and then unsteadily, he raised himself and made his way from the room. Cathy watched through the window and then when he was out of sight, she went around to the front door. She heard him fumbling with the lock while she impatiently waited.
When the door swung open, the practice pharmacist seemed barely half the man he had been all but a few days ago. Cathy pushed past him, afraid that he might refuse her entry.
‘Before we go any further,’ Cathy said sternly. ‘If you have taken anything, I need to know now. It will save me a good deal of bother later.’
Fraser shook his head.
‘Well?’ she said, not satisfied. ‘I’m serious, Fraser. I know you’ve had a rough time of things what with being hauled in by the police, but if you’ve swallowed something and decided to end it, tell me.’
Fraser led her through to the front room. ‘I’ve not,’ he said. ‘I came close, and I still might have if you’d not turned up. I’m so tired.’ He sat down in the chair she had seen him in, through the window. Cathy walked further into the room and sat down herself.
‘Fraser,’ she said and shook her head. ‘Has it really come to this?’
The man smiled sadly and looked at his hands. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said.
‘Well, how about you start telling me. I have a meeting up at the practice in just over an hour,’ Cathy said, looking at her watch. ‘You’re coming to the meeting with me, by the way, so you’d better buck up bloody quickly and start talking, or I’m going to look a bit of a fool going in there, amn’t I?’
Fraser shrugged wearily. ‘I can’t help. They don’t believe what I’ve told them anyway, the police. I told them that I killed Dr Hope, but they wouldn’t listen. Oh God, what a mess I’ve made of it all.’
‘Start at the beginning,’ Cathy said, her voice softening. ‘It’s far better that you tell me. I’ve guessed some of it already, I think. You didn’t intend to kill Dr Hope at all, did you? It was someone else.’
The whole story came out. How Fraser had been overjoyed at getting the job, but then, when he thought his life was settled, a face from the past came back to haunt him. He told Cathy of the dreadful torment he had suffered at Jackson’s hands all those years before as a junior pharmacist, and with the threat of losing all he had worked for, he had gone half-mad. In some crazed state, he had swilled paint-thinner around the thermos mug that Jackson alone used, knowing that come the following morning at coffee time, the man who might ruin him, would make his coffee in it and receive the fatal dose.
‘It was callous, to say the least,’ Fraser said. ‘I’ll never forgive myself for it. And then Jackson called in sick. I have no idea how the mix-up with the cups occurred. No-one else used that horrible mug. It was Jackson’s choice simply because he went out the back to smoke and it kept his coffee warm.’
Cathy cast her mind back to Mark’s room that fateful day as she crashed through the door and discovered her partner lying there. She had tried to picture it a thousand times before when she was attempting to recall what Tracy had seen was missing. Now, in her mind’s eye, Cathy saw the sink area and the cup beside it, that Dr Hope had only minutes before washed, having drunk his coffee.
‘It wasn’t a thermos mug, but an ordinary china one,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You didn’t kill Mark at all, Fraser. In fact, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the coffee. Your poisoned mug, I assume was loaded into the dishwasher along with the rest of the mugs and cups left lying around at the end of the day. Fraser, do you hear what I’m saying? You didn’t hurt anyone. You’re blameless.’
‘But what about Tracy then?’ Fraser asked. ‘I was seen fleeing the building. It looks grim. As it happens, I didn’t kill her. I found her; you know? I’m so sorry I wasn’t man enough to deal with it, and then I let you go on in there and … Oh God, what a mess. What must you think of me?’
Cathy sighed. ‘Bloody hell, this is self-indulgent, isn’t it? I thought you’d be delighted to be in the clear and here you are weeping and wailing about some of the finer details. Fraser, listen to me. The main thing is that you are not a murderer, right? Yes, you didn’t exactly act with the highest regard for others. I suspect you might well have to face some repercussions over the previous drug offences if the hospital pharmacy has any record of missing tablets, but as far as I can tell, you’ve done nothing wrong other than that. Yes, yes, I know you had the intention to harm, but it never actually came to it, thank God. Jackson himself has a few questions to answer too, I should say. I hardly think he’s general practitioner material. Certainly not at our practice, that’s for sure. Blackmail is a criminal offence. If you press charges, he might well lose his licence to practice as a doctor at all. I wonder if he did come looking for you, or if it was coincidence.’
Fraser snorted, and Cathy was glad to see that the colour had begun to come to his cheeks. ‘Oh, he came for me. He said as much upstairs the other day. What a gift, it must have been to get a training position in the same practice too.’
‘Well, let’s put that behind us now,’ Cathy said brusquely. ‘Time to get yourself sorted, Fraser. You’re needed at the practice now. We have a full-team meeting and you are part of that whether you like it or not. After today, we can discuss your employment arrangements. I think we'll need you more than ever when this is over, but of course, it’ll depend on what the police allow. As far as I’m concerned, it’s done with now. You’ve already made a huge difference to our practice; Fraser, and we’d be quite lost without you. Right, don’t just sit there, get washed or changed, or whatever you have to do. We need to get back to the practice, and fast.’
39
Michelle and Julie were already in the meeting room.
‘I hope this isn’t going to go on for too long,’ whispered Julie, squeezing Michelle’s arm. ‘I’ve got a stack of labs to sort out and we have to see to the house visits still.’
‘Brenda said it was just a quickie,’ Michelle replied. ‘She didn’t look best pleased this morning though. Face like thunder coming out of her office.’
The office girls perched on the sideboard at the end of the room, allowing their legs to dangle, knocking on the wood below.
The door opened and Irene, the sole practice nurse now, and Linda, who had taken on more shifts than she probably really wanted, came in. Both looked tired, and if anyone had taken the time to notice, they would have seen that poor Irene’s hand trembled as she drew back a chair to seat herself at the table beside James who had preceded them shortly before.
‘Brenda’s on her way up,’ the GP said. He too looked as if he could have well done without the meeting. He sat in his usual chair, his hair perhaps greyer than it had been a month or so ago. The last time they had all been gathered here was when Mark had still been alive. So much had happened since then, and yet it was only a matter of weeks before.
Cathy was the last to arrive, accompanied by Fraser to everyone’s surprise. All eyes were on the young pharmacist, but Cathy gave him a reassuring nod and indicated that he should sit beside her. James smiled at the practice manager as she shuffled her papers, but she had been looking at her notes which she ha
d drawn up that morning; a list of topics she must discuss and points she must cover. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, any of it.
‘Right, shut the door, Irene, if you don’t mind and we can get on,’ said Brenda. The practice manager settled in her chair and Cathy saw in front of her was a stack of patient notes and a notepad. She clicked her pen irritably a couple of times. The gesture reminded Cathy very much of poor Mark.
Cathy was still at a loss as to why Brenda had called the meeting in the first place. The practice manager had sent an email around first thing. No excuses for absentees, everyone must attend, it had said. For Cathy, it felt like the one opportunity to say her own piece. First, though, she would allow Brenda to say whatever it was that she needed to. The practice manager clearly had to get something off her chest.
Cathy looked around at the faces of her colleagues wondering if she really knew any of these people. Over these last weeks, even mild-mannered James had changed in her opinion. She looked across at her senior partner, his face creased, the skin tanned and weathered. The past few years must have been torture for him. Losing his wife and then day-in-day-out coming to work to serve his community, but at the cost of working alongside someone who he obviously despised. Cathy now knew that James had it in him to take a life. It changed her perception of him slightly. Everything had changed following her conversation with James’s old partner, Dr Clark. A mercy killing was still wrong. Cathy recalled the oath she swore to when she had qualified as a young doctor; first, do no harm. James had violated that pledge. Even if it was out of compassion, he had played God.