by Morag Joss
But now there was Bunny Fernandez, too. Until Warwick (and he hardly counted in that way) Stephen had never before had a death at the Sulis. It wasn’t what people came for. He had decided, immediately after Bunny had been found in a state of mouthing semi-consciousness, to go for containment. The circumstance of her having been seen by the Open Day guests, a good half-dozen prospective patients, was unfortunate, but he could do no more about it. It was just possible that enough had been said subsequently to allay any fear that Bunny was in any way illustrative of what happened to you if you went to the Sulis, but he did not hold out much hope of a flood of bookings arising from the Open Day. Again unfortunate, but not disastrous.
And he had squared things pretty well with the family. Seeing at once that Bunny was unlikely to recover he had persuaded the son-in-law that she really should not be moved to hospital to undergo ‘invasive, high-tech resuscitation procedures which would at best delay the inevitable for a few more painful days’. And the daughter had not needed persuading for she had lapsed into a kind of airy optimism, taking shelter behind his advice, or rather her own self-deluding interpretation of it, that if Bunny should stay at the clinic then her ‘little turn’ could surely only be something trivial. So luckily the worst possible eventuality—a patient being rushed more dead than alive into the Royal United from that posh Sulis place—had been avoided, and consequently no damaging gossip was currently buzzing around the entire city of Bath and its surrounding counties.
Nonetheless, once he had been able to get through to the daughter that her mother really had died it had offended him disproportionately, even as he was writing ‘cerebrovascular accident’ on the death certificate, that the old lady should have slipped away when in his careful hands. She had been loyal and rewarding to treat. That he had proved unworthy of her faith and ultimately undeserving of her gratitude swept through him as a kind of guilty sadness. He pulled the small bottle marked ‘Gaia—energising compound of organic carrot and orange juices with extract of betel’ from the front pocket of his track-suit top and drank deeply from it. Clear liquid reassurance swam down his body. You are a good doctor, he breathed to himself.
And yet, he considered, casting watchful eyes across the empty garden and drinking swiftly from the bottle again, not even Bunny’s strokes and subsequent death, which had been, as he had memorised for his own comfort, a peaceful end after more than eighty active years, were the worst part of this August. The worst of this most depressing of Augusts was the intractable nature of the other patients’ complaints.
He tried to brighten the picture for himself by thinking about Joyce Cruikshank who, despite having the most sceptical attitude of anyone in the establishment, had been improving steadily. She had gained weight and condition, and even if she was not a specimen of glossy good health, she looked much less brittle. Her attitude may have softened, too, though it hardly mattered. She still took her meals in her room, preferring the company of her dog to that of the other staff and patients, but her admittedly undemanding work seemed to find favour with those who went to her sessions. He was no musician himself, but the jangles and twangs and hoots that reached him from the music room sounded jolly enough.
But Dafydd Broadbent had come to the end of his stay and gone back to Llandeillo with twitching hands, a clear sign, they had decided between them, of the body’s ability to heal itself. Stephen, taking care not to call them convulsions, had said that the twitches must be the effects of deep muscle tissue realignment following trauma—Dafydd had had a nasty whiplash and wrist sprain last March following a prang on the A38—but, facing facts quietly to himself in the privacy of his garden, Stephen acknowledged that he had been relieved to see him go, for Dafydd had exhausted all the therapeutic possibilities in his pharmacopoeia and shown no real improvement. And Dafydd’s increasingly vivid nightmares, which had woken him screaming on several nights in a row, were potentially unsettling for other patients. Thank God for thick walls.
And he hadn’t liked the look of Jane Valentine this morning. The lassitude that she had displayed on arrival had deepened into profound exhaustion, though her appetite was still good, if sporadic. The alternating freezing, burning and numb sensations in the extremities might yet respond to massage and hot and cold spinal baths. He had known circulations lazier than hers though not, he conceded, in anyone as young as she was. Her intolerance of being covered even by the lightest of blankets was a tad hysterical and, in Yvonne’s view, mainly for his benefit. She could be right about that. Mrs Valentine would not be the first female patient keen to make sure that he saw how pretty her breasts looked under a silk nightdress, and she might be just at that stage following divorce when a forbidden, avenging affair on her own terms might appeal to her. Not that she would be up to much, physically, for the moment. Stephen smiled. There was no reason why he should not enjoy being regarded as quarry, but there was forbidden and forbidden and he drew the line at affairs with patients.
But not necessarily at patients’ friends, he pondered, watching unseen from his vantage point the progress of Sara Selkirk’s car up the drive, yet a mere affair, avenging, half-forbidden or otherwise was not what one could contemplate with a woman like that. Sara Selkirk was the sort of woman with whom there could be no paddling about in the shallows but only the deepest, headlong plunge into dark water. He could tell that ‘casual’ would simply not be in her vocabulary, which made her the most intoxicating and also the most dangerous of prospects. There was the policeman, of course, Andrew Poole. Stephen contemplated how much of an obstacle he might turn out to be. Her being attracted to him physically was easy enough to understand and the fellow was certainly no fool, but it was impossible to judge how strong the bond between them was. He found that this only added to the enjoyable sense of danger surrounding Sara. Perhaps his hope that they were not truly close arose more from his own need than from anything he had detected between them. Yet there was nothing remotely coquettish about her, so Stephen could not believe that he mistook altogether, when Sara looked at him, the merest shadow in her eyes that conveyed that she might not necessarily be completely committed elsewhere.
He watched her move into the building, thinking how good a red dress looks on a dark-haired woman, and feeling also neatly unavailable to answer her worried questions. He would not have to explain that James was much as before and see the disappointment in her eyes. James was, if anything, slightly worse, he reminded himself, slipping fretfully back into his original line of thought. Patients with major rebalancing to accomplish before the body’s own healing power prevailed often did get worse before they got better. It was a salutary reminder, Stephen thought, of the devastating effects that shock and stress can have on a body, because it was since Warwick’s and Bunny’s deaths that James had relapsed. Sometimes, he justified, the body needed a dose of the most effective natural relaxant known to man, and it was a pity that someone had not tipped a large brandy down James’s throat on Friday. After another careful look round he unscrewed the top off the juice bottle and drained the last of the vodka. It wasn’t as if it was a habit with him, after all, but it would not play well with either his loyal staff or adoring patients if they learned that from time to time he allowed himself to break his own rules. He was human, and it was not his fault, he thought peevishly, if people sometimes forgot that.
CHAPTER 35
YOUR CLIENT WHAT?’ Detective Sergeant Bridger asked Debbie Trowbridge. ‘I have advised my client that this identity parade contravenes the law and that even if he were to be positively identified, that would be inadmissible. Consequently my client is unhappy. And so am I,’ Debbie Trowbridge said in her official voice, with a barely discernible tremble of anger in it. That was the way this kind of guy got you, by making you so angry you showed it. His body language, which she translated accurately as I’ve got a cock and you haven’t, made her so furious that she was in danger of losing the cool professional edge that she had trained herself to add to her voice, which she considered
too light for a solicitor. She cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows. By concentrating on the farce for which this idiot was responsible, she could direct her anger where it belonged.
‘The conduct of this identity parade contravenes—Sergeant, are you listening to me?’
Bridger, about to fish in his pockets for cigarettes and matches, was raising a hand in greeting to someone behind her, who had presumably just entered the corridor by the doors at the end. Bridger stood up straighter.
‘Sergeant, I don’t seem to be getting through. I want to see DCI Poole. He’s leading this enquiry, isn’t he?’
‘I am. And good morning, Miss Trowbridge. Are we all set, Bridger? I hope your client’s ready?’
Thank God for a sane person to talk to. Debbie Trowbridge shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’ve been trying to get through to your sergeant here.’ DCI Poole was about to be as appalled as she had been, and it was she who was about to appall him.
‘My client, as you know, has been bailed pending further police enquiries into the murder of his wife. He has met all bail conditions in good faith and cooperated fully, at a time of considerable distress and difficulty for him. He should have returned to Japan last Friday. My client—’
Andrew interrupted indulgently. ‘Yes, yes, yes, understood. I’m not the magistrate, Debbie. What’s your point?’
‘My point,’ Debbie said, shaking her blonded hair and allowing herself to crow, ‘is that this identity parade has been rigged in a way which will put my client in an unfair position. All those taking part in an identity parade, if I may just remind you of your obligations under PACE—’
‘What’s the matter with the parade? Bridger? You’ve had a whole week to set this one up. What’s wrong with it?’ Andrew asked sharply, turning to Bridger.
‘You haven’t seen the line-up yourself, then?’
‘Of course I haven’t. I can’t organise an ID parade when I’m the officer leading the enquiry, you know that.’
‘It was the best I could do. I tried to tell you it’d be impossible,’ Bridger appealed to them, simultaneously defensive and pathetic. ‘You try getting hold of twelve middle-aged Japanese men who’ll cooperate. Most of them didn’t understand what we were asking, even with the interpreter. The ones that did didn’t want to come in to a police station on a Monday morning, why should they? They’re on holiday. I had to improvise.’ He looked accusingly at Debbie Trowbridge. ‘If you ask me, she’s making too much of it.’
Debbie looked hard at DCI Poole. ‘Six out of the ten men waiting to be in the line-up are English. Your sergeant could only find three other Japanese apart from the suspect. So the other six are wearing eyeliner. Two of them have black wigs on.’
She spoke slowly so as to spin out the effect, but was not enjoying the sight, much as she had hoped to, of Andrew Poole’s effort to control his rage while the fact of Bridger’s idiocy sank in. She returned down the corridor, trying not to make the clack of her heels sound unpleasantly triumphant. Poor Andrew Poole. She admired his control, really. It was not until she was just through the swing doors that she heard his voice shouting something, she could not be sure exactly what, but she fancied it was something about not the fucking D’Oyly Carte.
* * *
ANDREW STEPPED through the doors out of the police station and took a deep breath of air. He had left Inspector Lovesey, the officer in charge of the ID parade, reeling with amazement at Bridger’s crassness. Andrew, knowing him better, was not. Lovesey had been apologetic. He had rather let Bridger get on with it, he conceded to Andrew, who had pointed out that that was always, with Bridger, a mistake. And, he had gone on, the aborted ID parade had been his last and only hope of getting enough evidence to charge the suspect. The only other evidence was circumstantial, insufficient to charge, and Debbie Trowbridge had not had to point out that if after more than two weeks the enquiry had come up with nothing new then the police could not justifiably claim to have ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’. And without those grounds her client could not be charged and must be released. Professor Takahashi was going back to Japan. And so was Mrs Takahashi. They had released her body for burial and her sister would be arriving the next day to take her home.
Beyond the wall of the station the ordinary-looking mix of people in Bath in summertime trooped past on heavy feet, a disproportionate number weighed down with backpacks and luggage. The pedestrian crossing peeped intermittently, the traffic slowed, people walked, pushed pushchairs, pedalled bikes. Some, like the man edging out the door of Comet with a microwave the size of a large kennel, would be local. Others carried leaflets and cameras, their worn faces betraying the drudgery of European city-hopping. Probably not one of them had wasted, nor would now waste, a single second of their lives worrying about the murder of a thirty-one-year-old Japanese wife, or the husband who killed her.
Still standing on the steps of the station, Andrew yawned. It was tempting, for a moment, to think of spending the rest of the afternoon either drunk, asleep, or both, but he had promised Sara that he would look in on James before he set off with Dan. Despite their having parted yesterday in mutual rage (such a goddam fuss over a stiff shoulder) he would do so. Sighing heavily in a useless attempt to breathe the anger and disappointment out of his body, he set off for the Sulis.
Andrew took the entrance to the clinic almost at a run and made swiftly across the empty hall for the stairs. It had been Sara’s idea that he should get in and up to James’s room as quickly as possible and so avoid any imperious advice not to disturb the patient, but the hall remained silent. Sister Yvonne and her colleagues must be standing guard over some other ailing inmate, Andrew supposed, and framed the idea in his mind to tell James this as amusingly as he could. But the moment he entered the room he could see that James, who was awake and would have preferred not to be, would be neither receptive to the joke nor capable of laughing. Andrew stifled a gasp. In the space of three days James seemed to have lost half the air in his body. He lay on top of his bed like a half-deflated, greyish container for a human being rather than a person who properly filled his own frame. His breathing was short. In his eyes Andrew saw relief rather than pleasure to see him, and fear. James raised both hands, which were trembling violently. Beneath the covers his legs and torso kicked and jerked.
‘It feels like things are crawling all over me. It’s disgusting. All over. I shut my eyes and I see things, it’s horrible. I haven’t slept.’
‘But—’ Andrew gathered his wits just in time to remember that it would not be a good idea to let James see how alarmed he was. ‘What does the doctor say? Dr Golightly’s seen you, surely?’
James nodded. ‘Didn’t say much. Try to rest. Body needs time. Keep fluids up.’ He closed his eyes. ‘But I feel sick all the time. I can’t control my hands. Can you get Tom? Please get Tom.’
Andrew considered for a moment, and spoke calmly. ‘The first thing I think I should do is get you to a hospital. Don’t you think that’s where you should be?’
‘I told them that, I said I’ve never ever felt this bad. Dr G said highly inadvisable. Yvonne says nursing’s appalling at the RUH, I’m better off here. Dr G doesn’t want—’
‘To hell with what Dr G wants.’ Andrew felt his earlier anger rise up again and this time he directed it, rightly or wrongly he did not care, towards Stephen Golightly. He was too furious to waste time arguing. ‘I think a little direct action is called for. Come on. Get that blanket round you. Now—that’s it. Put your arms round my neck and hang on.’
James breathed thanks, before allowing himself to be wrapped in the blanket and lifted from the bed. On a better day he might have managed some facetious remark about Andrew’s butch arms but he said nothing more, simply hoping he was not too heavy and that he would be able to lie still. On the hazardous way down he hung on and kept his eyes closed, nervous in principle but almost doubting if the experience of landing on the hall floor, having been dropped down five flights of stairs, would in practice make h
im feel any worse than he did already.
From the window of the treatment room Sister Yvonne saw the large, fluttering white bundle being carted down to the car park, opened her mouth to squawk and closed it again. For there was nobody she could squawk to. Dr Golightly was upstairs seeing Mrs Valentine, Joyce was in her room with her damn dog who, she claimed, was still sick, and the only other people on the premises also had problems of their own. She turned from the window and looked closely at Hilary on the couch.
‘Feeling a bit better, now?’ she asked, with genuine concern. She had surprised herself by finding that she could actually feel tenderly towards the woman.
Hilary, lying white-faced, began to cry again and tried to sit up.
‘Oh, dear, dear, dear,’ Yvonne said, settling her back down. ‘Don’t try to move yet. Just you lie there, dear, till Ivan gets back. You’re going to be fine. No pain, is there? No? Now remember, that’s a very good sign.’ She smiled a smile of professional optimism. ‘Spotting’s terribly common in the first few weeks, remember. It’s usually nothing to worry about at all. I know it’s upsetting, of course you’re worried, but staying calm’s the best thing you can do for Baby. Isn’t it?’
The door opened and Ivan entered, carrying a cup and saucer. The sight of his face, as white as Hilary’s and scarcely less frightened, brought a lump to Yvonne’s throat. He must want that baby as desperately as Hilary did. She squeezed her crossed fingers in her uniform pocket, begging some imagined, consultant-like deity, the great Obstetrician in the Sky, that Hilary’s unexpected slight show of blood should not be the start of a miscarriage. Please make it all right for them, poor things.
‘Has it stopped?’ Ivan asked anxiously. ‘There’s no more, is there?’
Hilary shook her head. ‘It’s only the bit I saw when I went to the loo.’
‘And it’s bright red, not thick and dark,’ Yvonne said comfortably. ‘That’s another good sign. And when you’re feeling better, we’ll ring your midwife. I expect she’ll want to check you over.’