‘Hey, don’t try and shift that on to me. It was an internal thing, you agreed that at the time! If it hadn’t been for the link between you and me we might never have known about it. No one filed any complaint. Nor did anyone make a formal complaint to us about the bottle in the Beetle cupboard that was tampered with. And I’ve been meaning to ask you, why Beetle cupboard?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Why is it called a Beetle cupboard? The place where you store all your materials and so forth?’
She shrugged. ‘Why is the sky up and the ground down? I really don’t know. That’s what all store cupboards are called around Old East. In other British hospitals too, for all I know. I can’t remember what we called ’em in Inverness. Is it important?’
‘Not in the least,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I just wondered. Look, let’s do a recap, OK? Then we can see where we stand. There have been three deaths at Old East which you think — thought? — well, which you said at the time were due twice to accident, once to suicide. Then as a quite separate thing, or so it seems, there were three attempts apparently meant to hurt Sheila: the car, the chocolates, the hydrochloric acid bottle. The only person you thought might be involved, our friend Zack, appears to be as pure as the driven slush. We’ve not done a great deal of investigation admittedly, but we do know that we have no information to show us who might be responsible for those three attempts. The cable and solenoid switch in the car engine could have been obtained anywhere — a more anonymous collection of bits and bobs you couldn’t find — and the chocolates too could have come from anywhere. As for hydrochloric acid, well, it’s hardly a rare item in a hospital, is it?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’ It was clear she was not really listening to him. ‘Gus, what did you find out about the deaths? Do you remember? You said you’d look into the people themselves a little more.’
He nodded. ‘I got a couple of our lads to see what they could suss out. The only thing the three of ’em had in common was a lack of personal contacts. They lived alone, each and every one, though we know of course that Pam Frean had some sort of lover in the shadows. She killed herself — or so her note suggested — for him. Lally Lamark was a childless widow who had lived in the same house for many years but her neighbours didn’t know her well. They used that phrase, you know? “Kept herself to herself,” they said. And the other one —’
‘Tony Mendez.’
‘Yeah. He’d been married and had a couple of children but the marriage had broken down a long time ago because of his drinking. The wife and two sons emigrated to Australia, and that was that. If he had other relations no one knew of them — he never mentioned anyone special in his life. Same with friends. Lots of vague acquaintances, but no one close. His neighbours had plenty to say about him — mostly because they didn’t know very much, but love to have a gossip — and so did your personnel people here. Oops, mustn’t forget, they’re called the Human Resources department nowadays, aren’t they? That always makes me imagine shops with shelves full of spare legs and arms and eyes and so forth, to fit out humans who’ve lost their own … Where was I? Oh, yes. Mendez. He had a small council flat in the Doolittle Estate over towards Poplar, and lived there alone except for a cat. He’s worked here for twelve years or so. They knew he was a reformed alcoholic when they took him on, but Old East has always had a positive policy towards disability, so they took a chance on him. At first he was only allowed to do pretty menial stuff under supervision, which he accepted without fuss, though apparently originally he’d trained as an engineer. He just got on with things, and showed he was reliable and progressed to being second-in-command of the theatre porters. Not bad at all for an ex-lush, is it? They spoke highly of him over there, said he was a reliable bloke who knew the department inside out and never missed anything important. And that’s about it. Oh, yes, one other thing. Lally Lamark was a diabetic’
‘I knew that, of course,’ George said. ‘I thought I told you.’
‘Um. The reason I mention it now is that it seems it was about her only interest. The stuff in her house — there were files of articles and shelves of books about diabetes and nutrition — it’s like she’d made a hobby of her health, there was so much there.’
‘Some diabetics do do that. It’s as good a way of dealing with a lifelong condition as any. Makes you feel in charge of it. Not that she managed that at the end, poor thing. For all her knowledge she still managed to go into an insulin coma.’
‘That was the only thing I remember being puzzled about when I saw the report Urquhart sent in on her. If she was so knowledgeable, how come she had an accident? But then I thought, well, maybe diabetes is like that. Unpredictable?’
He quirked an eyebrow at her, making it into a question, but she shook her head. ‘Not usually. I mean, getting a patient’s insulin levels right, understanding the pattern of their activity so that the dosage can be tailored for them, that’s part of the care they get. Some of them had trouble changing from pig insulin to human insulin when it first became available — they found it was less likely to give them warning symptoms of a dangerous change in blood-sugar levels — but as I say, most of them cope very well indeed. I looked into that too as far as she was concerned, and according to her medical notes she was well stabilized. But even the most stable and experienced may sometimes make a mistake. Perhaps she’d been a bit off-colour — had a gut infection with a bit of diarrhoea and vomiting. That can upset insulin and blood-sugar levels. Or, even more likely, she hadn’t realized what the time was and forgot to eat when she should.’
‘Nothing else possible?’ He looked enquiring again. ‘Could she have taken too much insulin, for example? A case of simple overdose?’
She shook her head. ‘The term overdose is relative in this context. It was much more likely to be an underdose of food or maybe excessive activity that burned off her sugar and left her insulin too high, because it’s very difficult for people to make mistakes with their injections. They use pens, you see, not syringes any more.’
‘Pens?’
‘That’s what they look like. Fountain pens. They get their insulin in cartridges, load the pen as it were with ink, and then simply have to push the plunger home when they’ve slipped the needle into a suitable bit of subcutaneous tissue. The dose is premeasured.’
‘So it couldn’t be an overdose in the classic sense?’
‘I don’t see how.’
He was thoughtful for a while. ‘These pens. Can I see one?’
‘I imagine so. They have them in Pharmacy. You want me to get one for you?’
‘If you would.’
‘Why?’
‘I wonder how they work.’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘Yes, but maybe the mechanism that measures the dose can be at fault. I imagine there’s some sort of mechanism involved.’
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘It’s a sort of screw arrangement. It’s set so that it pushes the plunger in so far and no further, and exactly the right dose is given.’ She frowned then. ‘I wonder what happened to it?’
‘Happened to what?’
‘Her pen,’ George said. ‘When she was found, she had a few things in her pockets — I remember seeing the list Danny made when he prepared the body for post-mortem — but there was no insulin pen among them. But she must have had one with her.’
‘In her bag, maybe?’
‘Her bag?’
He sighed a little theatrically. ‘Dear George, when did you ever see a woman without a handbag of some sort? Only I forgot, you call it a purse.’ He pointed to the soft leather tote bag slung on the bench beside her. ‘Like yours. What have you got in it?’
‘Just the usual things,’ she said, looking at the bag. ‘Money and keys and — er — a handkerchief and —’
‘Let’s have a look.’ He held out a hand. ‘Unless it’s a secret, of course.’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ she said. She pushed the bag over to him and he opened it.
She peered and went a little pink. ‘That’s personal.’
He smiled and pushed the small square box to one side. ‘See what I mean? Things to do with your personal needs, you carry with you. And here.’ He pulled out a sheet of pills in a bubble wrap, a few of them already missing from the pack. ‘What’re these?’
She made a face. ‘Analgesics. I get the occasional headache and I don’t like to be without ’em. It’s harmless and very effective. A mixture of codeine and paracetamol.’
He pushed everything back into the bag, looking no further, although there was still, she noted with a slight sense of embarrassment, a good deal of detritus there. ‘So I’m right. Women carry important things with them, important personal things. Like a diabetic’s insulin pen.’
She nodded slowly, staring at him. ‘You’re absolutely right. I never thought — the body certainly had no purse with it.’
‘Was there a coat, an outdoor coat? I mean, she died before this heatwave started, didn’t she? So she’d have had a coat or jacket or something to go home in, I imagine. Where would that be?’
She was getting really interested now. ‘I don’t know. I suppose that she must have had a locker in the office where she worked. Most departments do have them.’
‘A locker?’
‘Like the one you have yourself at the nick, I imagine. For a change of clothes and bits and bobs.’
‘And handbags.’
‘Yes, I guess so. And bags.’
‘Has a locker been found in the Records department that belonged to Lally Lamark?’
She shook her head. ‘I haven’t the least idea. It never occurred to me to check, dammit.’ She reached for her bag and jumped to her feet. ‘Come on, Gus. Let’s go and look.’
‘Eh?’ He gawped at her.
‘I said, let’s go and look. I want to know what’s been happening here!’
‘Sweetheart,’ Gus said reasonably. ‘It’s almost nine o’clock at night. Are you telling me the Medical Records department is open at this hour? I thought even in hospitals office employees worked office hours.’
‘Of course they do. All the better. We can go and look around without anyone to get in our way. You want to untangle this one, don’t you? You admit you haven’t done enough work on it so far, so come on!’
He sighed. ‘So much for my fish supper.’
‘We can eat later, can’t we? This shouldn’t take long. Do come on, Gus. I really am dying to see what happened to that pen. And you’re the one who had the idea that someone might have meddled with Lally’s pen and given her an overdose of insulin without her knowing.’
‘Did I say that?’
She was getting even more impatient. ‘Not directly, but that’s the idea you put into my head. So please, Gus, can we go and look?’
He got to his feet. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll make a blind bit of difference what I say. OK, we’ll go and look. If you can get me in, that is. And if you can find out which her locker is, once you have, because I’ll tell you now, we’re not breaking into a whole lot of ’em. But I’m in only on the understanding that afterwards we go out and eat.’
‘Don’t worry, Gus.’ She led the way out of the pub. ‘You won’t die of starvation yet.’
‘No? I already feel as though I am. I didn’t have lunch, you know, not like some.’ Grumbling plaintively all the way, he nodded at the landlord, flicked his thumb and forefinger at the brim of the hat he wasn’t wearing as a gesture of farewell, and went back to Old East with her, through the fading light of the hot evening.
25
It still wasn’t dark when they reached the hospital. On these hot nights it seemed to George that the sky never did get really dark. It retained the exhausted glow of the baking daylight hours for so long that it seemed the sun was up again before the previous day had fully faded into peaceful slumber, so each day started as wearily as though the world hadn’t had a chance to sleep at all; a fanciful notion for which George scolded herself as they made their way across the courtyard from the main entrance, on their way to the Administrative Block and the Medical Records department.
‘Won’t we have to get permission and keys from someone?’ Gus said. ‘I ain’t about to do any breaking and entering. I’ve got no warrant.’
‘No need,’ she said. ‘My swipe card’ll get us in.’ She reached into her pocket for it. ‘Those of us who may need access to notes urgently have special ones. That includes A & E staff and most of the consultants and, through them, their registrars and house officers.’
‘Why you?’ He was genuinely curious. ‘It’s not likely you’ll be needed to advise on a living patient in the middle of the night, is it?’
‘It has been known,’ she said. ‘Or maybe it would be relevant if there’s an unexpected death, hmm? Anyway, it means we can get in now without any fuss. I could go and find Bittacy, I suppose, but to tell you the truth he’s a bit of a little Hitler — you know, one of those guys who like to show they’re in charge. He can’t stop me going in any more than he can stop me going anywhere the card is valid for. I suppose if we’re really security-minded we would make sure he knows.’
‘You mean you’re supposed to tell him, as head of security, if you use these facilities outside normal working hours, is that it?’ he said shrewdly.
She had the grace to redden a little. ‘Oh, come on, Gus. You know what it’s like when you get these self-important fusspots! And you said you were hungry, didn’t you? If we have to go and look for him it’ll add a half-hour at least to the job. But if you insist, of course …’
He wavered; she grinned at him; and he fell. ‘OK, OK. You win. We don’t tell security and just go in. Where?’
‘This way.’
The Medical Records department was stuffy to the point of being smelly: dust and the lingering wraiths of human sweat and tired feet and dying vegetation were the keynotes. George felt her spirits droop a little as she quietly closed the door behind Gus and repocketed her swipe card.
‘Someone’s forgotten to water their potted plants,’ Gus said loudly. Absurdly, she wanted to shush him. There was no need of course; as she had assured Gus, she had as much right to be here as anyone. But for all that she felt a twinge of guilt as though she were prying into other people’s property. Which, of course, she told herself as she moved forwards to find the light switches, is precisely what I am doing. But with impeccable motives.
‘Not too many lights,’ Gus said mildly. ‘Unless you want someone, i.e. Bittacy, spotting them and wondering if the place is being burgled.’
‘Mmm.’ She sounded a little abstracted, but she obeyed him all the same, switching on one of the desk lamps that threw just a low glow on the surface of the piles of papers that had been left on the desk.
‘As far as I know, the staff have their own rest room here. Let’s see.’ She squinted into the dimness, seeing more easily now as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and then led the way across the big space and through the ranks of desks. ‘Over here. The main records rooms are on the sides, that I do know, so I imagine that the door here leads through — Ah!’ She stopped in triumph as she pushed open the door and peered in. ‘Black as the tomb, so there’s no windows. Great.’ She fumbled for a light switch and the room sprang into life.
The air in here was even more exhausted, with a powerful smell of unwashed clothing and old shoes. Gus wrinkled his nose a little as he closed the door behind him and looked around. ‘I hope they keep the records in a better state than they keep their own stuff,’ he said with strong disapproval. ‘How can people be so messy?’ The look of distress on his face was almost comical.
‘Maybe it’s because of having to be so organized with their work,’ George said. ‘Always making sure everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be must be desperately boring, but they have to do it because all hell breaks loose if notes go missin
g because they’re misfiled. But never mind the untidiness. It’s the lockers I’m interested in.’
‘First things first.’ He came forward and set her to one side. ‘Let me do a recce first.’ He searched with swift deftness through the piles of magazines that littered a battered sofa in one corner, and picked over the assorted items such as old raincoats and umbrellas which hung on a row of hooks alongside it. Then he turned his attention to a little cluster of plastic bags on a table; these contained assorted detritus including biscuits which shed crumbs everywhere and assorted packets of tea bags and sugar. In another bag there were apples and a third contained curled and stale sandwiches which looked, George told him, like the best culture medium for toxic bacteria she’d seen since she got to Old East.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘That’s their business. I’m just looking for anything that might seem to point to Lally Lamark.’ He stopped and looked again at the sandwiches. They had been in transparent plastic packs, clearly; the wreckage of them still lay in the white plastic bag. The sandwiches had been taken out, but not bitten into; staring at the one he set gingerly on the plastic bag, he said to George, ‘How old d’you reckon that is?’
‘Hard to say’ She peered at it. ‘Several weeks, perhaps. Look, the bread is rock hard.’ She poked a forefinger at it. ‘And the mould appears to have stopped growing because there’s no real nutrition left there. You can’t even see what sort of sandwich it was. I’d say it was very old indeed. I dare say I could find out more if I took it to the lab and set to work on it. Why?’
‘Didn’t you say that Lally had perhaps suffered not so much from an overdose of insulin as the reverse? An underdose of sugar, maybe? Food, that is?’
She blinked at him, her eyes wide. ‘You think these could be the sandwiches Lally should have eaten and didn’t? You could be right. She might have given herself her insulin and meant to eat her supper at the right time afterwards.’
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