‘You’ll go now, or it’ll be all the worse for you.’
She slammed the door of her locker shut, turned the key in it, put it in her pocket, and turned round. Her audience, she couldn’t help noticing, was still there. ‘How can it be worse for me, you arsehole? You’ve got me suspended. If you’re going to threaten me, you’ll have to try a bit harder than that.’
‘You’ll be unemployable if I’ve anything to do with it.’
‘Really?’ she said, and then allowed her eyes to look past him. She saw alarm register on his face. He turned and saw what she saw.
‘Can I help?’ he snapped angrily, all the veneer of politeness stripped from his voice.
‘So what was that all about?’ Holden was sitting in the staff room, and Greenleaf was opposite her. She had already heard Lawson and Wilson’s versions of the incident. They had been able to agree most of what was said, despite the fact that at the time neither of them had fully understood the potential importance of what they were hearing – because neither of them had encountered Bella Sinclair before. Right now the two of them stood as observers on either side of the room. Only Fox was absent, ensuring that Bella Sinclair stayed put until Holden had had a chance to speak to her too.
‘As you know, Bella is suspended. She shouldn’t have been here. We were just having a few words.’
‘From what my colleagues say, it was more than a few words.’
‘We were both a bit on edge. What do you expect?’
‘You threatened her.’
‘In what way?’
‘To make her unemployable.’
‘If she’s found guilty of theft and mistreatment of patients, then she will be unemployable. That’s pretty much a fact, not a threat.’
‘It sounded more than that to my colleagues.’
‘Look, we were both shouting. Sometimes it sounds worse than it is.’
Holden frowned, and worried at her bottom lip with her forefinger. She didn’t believe him. ‘I understand Bella turned down your advances.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Holden worried a bit more with her forefinger. He knew damned well what she was talking about. He was playing the innocent, playing for time. ‘I’m talking about the time you went round to her flat unannounced, and ended up in bed with her.’
For a moment, he looked bemused, and then his face creased into a smile. ‘Is that what she told you?’
‘Actually,’ Holden continued quickly, ‘she also said that when you suggested doing it again another day, she laughed at you.’
His smile turned rueful, and he himself gave his own brutal laugh. ‘There are two things you need to know about Bella. First, she’s a pathological liar; she wouldn’t recognize the truth if it stood up and bit her on the nose. And second, it was she who hit on me. We slept together a couple of times, in her flat. When I went round there that day, it was to tell her it was over. End of story.’
Five minutes later, and it was Bella Sinclair who was sitting in the chair opposite Holden. Her red hair was tied back tight behind her head, exposing the whole of her face. This did not, Holden reckoned, do her any favours, for it accentuated the lines across her forehead, the darkness under her eyes, and the creases at either corner of her mouth. The anger that Lawson and Wilson had witnessed had disappeared. Bella seemed tired, as if the encounter with Greenleaf had drained her of her spirit.
‘I’d like to ask you what was so important in your locker that you came in this morning to get it even though you’re under suspension?’
Bella shrugged. ‘There was a ring I wanted, and a book I hadn’t finished reading, and I thought why shouldn’t I come in and get what belonged to me.’
‘Can I see the ring?’
‘If you want to.’ There was no resistance, no reluctance. She pulled it off the third finger of her right hand and passed it across to Holden. ‘It belonged to my mother. It’s not very valuable, but it’s important to me. I always take it off when I’m working, and last week I forgot to put it on again at the end of the shift.’
‘And the book?’
Bella dug into her bag, removed the copy of Unless from it, and passed it over.
‘Is it any good?’
‘So far, yes.’
Holden began to flick through the pages. ‘Where have you got to?’
‘I’m about half way through, I think.’
‘Hmm.’ Holden continued to flick through the pages. ‘It’s just that I can’t find a bookmark. Don’t you use one?’
There was the briefest of pauses before Bella replied. ‘Not a bookmark as such. Usually just a scrap of paper.’
‘There’s no scrap of paper.’
‘It must have fallen out.’
‘That’s awkward for you.’
‘Not really. I know where I got to. I’m at “Yet”.’
‘Sorry?’ Holden looked at her hard. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I’ve reached the chapter called “Yet”.’ She paused, enjoying the confusion in the detective’s eyes. ‘All the chapters have strange names, like “Wherein” and “Otherwise”. I’m at “Yet”.’
Holden ate at her mother’s flat again that night. It was becoming one-way traffic. She couldn’t remember when she had last cooked for her mother. She had taken her out to the new restaurant on Folly Bridge a couple of weekends previously, but she hadn’t actually cooked for her for ages. Whereas her mother had fed her at the drop of a hat last Friday, and had then rung her up on Sunday and invited her round for Tuesday. It was strange how they had slipped back into the role of mother and daughter. Only to describe it as slipping back wasn’t quite accurate. It had been with her father that she’d had the stronger – and more troubled – relationship as a girl and then, as a teenager. When he’d died, she and her mother had found themselves washed up high and dry with only each other for support. It hadn’t taken long for this enforced closeness to have its consequences: Susan had moved to Oxford, leaving her mother to fend for herself. When she had thought about it – and that hadn’t been often – Susan had felt ashamed of herself. And it was because of that shame that she had eventually, on one of her rare visits home, suggested that her mother might like to move into one of the rather smart retirement flats in Grandpont, a stone’s throw from where she herself lived. To her surprise, her mother had agreed, and six months later they had become almost neighbours. And then they had begun the awkward process of rebuilding their relationship.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Her mother opened the door, a smile on her face. ‘Look at you!’
‘It’s been a bit of a day.’ They exchanged kisses and Susan kicked off her pumps.
‘Supper’s almost ready. Why don’t you unwind in front of the telly?’
Susan dutifully moved through to the drawing room, turned the television on, and slumped down on the sofa. Her mother had been an absolute brick since Karen’s death. Her own suspension from work had followed, and then an extended break on medical grounds, and through all that desperate time her mother had been there for her. Feeding her, ringing her, calling round. The old Susan would have rebelled at the unwanted intrusion, but the fact was she couldn’t get enough of being mothered. She had not had it for so long. She had fought against it all through her teenage years, and now extraordinarily she needed it more than she could ever have imagined. She felt tears welling up. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, and unconvincingly told herself to take a grip.
They ate in virtual silence, punctuated by only the occasional comment: ‘Pass the pepper, would you?’ ‘This is very good, Mother.’ ‘It’s nice to have someone to cook for.’ Afterwards, Susan cleared the table, putting the dirty things in the dishwasher, and then she retreated again to the sofa, until her mother brought the coffee through.
‘So,’ her mother said, when they were both settled, ‘how was your day?’
‘Where to begin?’ Susan balanced her mug on her lap. Now that she had eaten and unwound, she was more th
an ready to answer questions. It was good to have someone to use as a sounding board, and sometimes – as she knew from experience – her mother could be really quite perceptive.
The day had begun, of course, with Wilson and Lawson overhearing that lively encounter between Bella Sinclair and Peter Greenleaf. She recounted this to her mother, and then her own interviews of the two, with Greenleaf claiming that they had had a brief affair which he had terminated, and then adding the damning allegation that Bella was a pathological liar.
‘Do you believe him?’
‘I don’t want to believe him, and yet …’ She tailed off, not finishing her sentence, took another sip of coffee, and then described her own conversation with Bella about the book Unless.
Mrs Holden frowned. ‘I take it that you don’t think that Bella was in the middle of reading that book?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘So maybe Greenleaf is right, and she is a pathological liar. Or,’ she continued, raising her finger like a schoolteacher making a point, ‘she was lying about the book because she was trying to distract you from something else she had removed from the locker.’ Mrs Holden gave the smile of someone suddenly rather pleased with herself. ‘You didn’t search her did you, by any chance?’
‘I had no grounds.’
‘What about the ring she showed you?’
‘It was a nice enough ring, but not exactly a knuckle duster.’
‘That was probably to distract you too. I bet there was something else she removed from the locker. Some incriminating bit of evidence. The packaging of the morphine that she gave to the old woman, for example.’
‘Mother! That’s pure speculation.’
‘Maybe, but hasn’t the thought occurred to you?’
Of course the thought had occurred to Susan Holden, and the fact that it had occurred to her mother too gave her no satisfaction. She and her team had, in fact, searched all the lockers that afternoon, but if ever there had been a case of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted, that had been it.
‘The problem with this case is that the more you look, the more the possibilities open up. You see, we also bumped into Jim Wright at Sunnymede today.’
Her mother frowned, her recall of the detail of the case suddenly falling short. She was finding that more and more these days. Sometimes she knew a name, and yet when she twirled it round the computer of her brain, its significance failed to register.
‘Jim Wright is Nanette’s son,’ her daughter said softly. ‘Her only son, in fact, and he’s rather short of money.’
‘Of course he is.’ Mrs Holden was cross with herself. ‘So what was he doing there?’
‘It turns out he’s been doing odd jobs at Sunnymede. Greenleaf hired him to help out with the maintenance. What with the review of the place, there’s been quite a bit to bring up to scratch, and so Jim has been helping out their regular man of all trades on the staff, Roy Hillerby.’
‘Oh dear,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t think I remember a Roy either.’
Her daughter leant across and gave her a comforting pat on the arm. ‘Actually, Mother, I don’t think I’ve mentioned him before. Mind you, he may be important. The gossip is, according to Lawson, that he’s been pursuing Bella Sinclair ever since she started at Sunnymede.’
‘So this Bella must be attractive.’
Her daughter swallowed the last of her coffee. ‘Yes, she is.’ She got up then, thanked her mother for supper, gave her a prolonged hug, and left. She could have talked more about the case, but suddenly tiredness had hit her, and she felt sure that if she could just get home and collapse into bed, she would sleep, despite the coffee. Thoughts and theories were spiralling around inside her like crazy bees, so as she walked slowly along Chilswell Road, she began to silently utter her own private mantra, in the hope that this would empty her head of at least some of them.
CHAPTER 6
She was there again at George and Delila’s, and she had already chosen me a mango and passion fruit ice cream when I arrived. She said she was having one too. It was nice, though I would have preferred a chocolate nugget one. But I didn’t tell her that. Instead I said, ‘This is nice, Bella.’
‘Do you remember what we agreed yesterday, David?’
I wasn’t sure what she meant. ‘No,’ I said.
‘You were going to call me either Mum or Mother.’
I looked at her. I wondered if I should call her Mum, but when I thought of Mum, it wasn’t her I thought of. It was difficult. ‘I’ll call you Mother,’ I said.
‘Thank you, son,’ she said. ‘That sounds really nice.’
I ate my ice cream until it was all gone. Mother kept looking at me. I felt embarrassed. I don’t like being watched.
‘I think I’d better go,’ I said.
‘I’m so pleased we found each other,’ Mother said.
I didn’t know what to say. But I did want to ask a question. It had been battering my brain ever since our last conversation, but I was frightened. So I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. Then I asked my question: ‘Why did you abandon me, Mother?’
‘Oh David,’ she said, in a voice like velvet. ‘I didn’t abandon you. Don’t think of it like that. I had you adopted because at the time that was the best thing for you.’ There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped at them with one of the paper napkins on the table. ‘Your father died in a car crash, and I got ill, David. I couldn’t look after you. So I had you adopted to keep you safe. But now I’m back. And I’ll never go away again.’
‘I think we should tell my mum.’ I looked at her. There were tears in her eyes again. ‘I mean my adopted mum. Maureen.’
‘Not yet, David. It’s too soon. One day, when we’ve got to know each other better, then we will tell her everything. It will come as a shock to her, David, and we don’t want to upset her, do we?’
‘No,’ I said. Mother was right, I didn’t want to upset Mum.
She looked at me and smiled. She has a nice smile. ‘Just remember, I never stopped loving you David,’ she said. ‘Just remember that.’
I looked at my watch. ‘I have to go now,’ I said.
‘This is fun.’ DC Lawson’s voice was pure sarcasm, but DC Wilson appeared not to have heard. For the last hour and a half, the two of them had been poring over the controlled drugs register of Sunnymede Care Home. Or, to be precise, Wilson had done most of the poring. He thrived on detail and order, and the painstaking task of tracking each batch of every morphine product as listed in the book, and comparing the balance against the actual drugs in the wall cabinet, was one that absorbed his every fibre. Lawson, however, was already bored. She knew the potential importance of the task: if they could identify a missing dose or two of morphine, that would be a huge step forward in the tracking of Nanette Wright’s killer, and yet she had already abdicated responsibility to Wilson. She merely checked out each batch of drugs when Wilson called out a number, confirming the number of pills or capsules left. But her mind was elsewhere, turning and twisting the detail of the case as she currently knew it, and formulating theories about possible motivations for killing an old lady. Had it been an accidental overdose or a deliberate act of murder? What sort of woman had Nanette Wright been – a dear old lady, or a vicious old cow? Why would someone have wanted to kill her? Her gut feeling was that it was family, most likely her son and daughter-in-law trying to hurry her to an early death in order to get her money, but her imagination conjured up an alternative scenario, a warped mercy-killer stalking the care homes of Oxford, seeking victims to release from their mortal coil. Was this going to be the first of many? Were there other deaths in the offing, or indeed were there others already committed and yet undetected? The idea of being involved in a case of that magnitude excited her, conjuring up absurd romantic images, with herself as one of the key figures at the centre of the media scrum that would inevitably occur, and which would lead – equally inevitably – to her own promotion.
W
ilson was working his way through the final page of the register, checking the doses of morphine given to a Mrs White. These had been regular daily doses, and the reduction in stock levels all added up. A last batch had come in a week before she died, and the dosage had been increased on a couple of days as – he presumed – the pain got worse, but there was no obvious discrepancy and nothing to set alarm bells ringing. When she died there had been eighty millilitres of morphine left, and these had, according to the list, been handed over to Oxford Waste Ltd, the licensed waste disposal company that Sunnymede used.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said.
‘That’s what?’ Lawson replied.
‘I can’t find any discrepancies.’
‘Did you expect to?’
‘It’s our job to check it out.’
‘It’s also part of our job to use our brains. If I was a killer nurse trying to filch drugs, I’d take them from someone who had died. I’d pretend to have passed them over for destruction, and I’d doctor the paperwork to make it look as though that had happened.’
‘That’s why we need to check the paperwork at the other end.’ Wilson felt irritated with Lawson. He wasn’t so dumb this hadn’t occurred to him. It was just that he believed in being methodical. ‘And that is what I intend to do,’ he continued quickly, before Lawson could butt in. ‘Go to Oxford Waste and check that the paperwork at their end ties up with the paperwork here.’
‘So you don’t need me for that?’ Lawson felt there were more interesting ways to pursue the case.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Normally Wilson enjoyed working alongside Lawson. But not today. ‘But we’ll need to check it out with the guv.’
Lawson made a noise that might well have been a snort. ‘Don’t you worry your little head, Constable. I’ll go and find her now, bring her up to date, and tell her where you’ve gone.’
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