A Bleeding of Innocents

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Possible?’ asked Donovan.

  ‘Not impossible,’ allowed Liz. ‘But we’re back to wondering why, if he’s been dead four years, someone should start avenging him now. We’ll check it out but I bet it’s someone else.’ She moved on to the next name.

  After a moment it struck her that Donovan was no longer with her. Physically he was still sitting on the far side of the desk, hunched on a chair that seemed too low for him, his long legs bent like a stick insect’s, his plastered forearm resting across his knees. But a gap had opened between them. The forefinger of his good hand was no longer tracing down the hospital list in response to the names she read out; his body had grown still and his face had gone distant, out of focus. She stopped reading and waited. After a minute she said quietly, ‘Sergeant? What is it?’

  He started and his gaze jerked round to her. His eyes were flayed. ‘Nothing. Sorry, I – I just went AWOL for a minute. Where did we get to?’

  She put the papers down. ‘Never mind that for a moment. Are you still blaming yourself for what happened to Saunders?’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’ But there was no conviction in the way he said it.

  Liz sighed. ‘Donovan, listen. We’re not responsible for the things we can’t prevent. The man who killed him is responsible for Emil Saunders’death. Maybe Saunders gave him a reason. But all you’re guilty of is trying to fit a thirty-hour day into twenty-four hours. Yes, it would be nice if we could sit on people’s doorsteps until they were ready to talk to us. Once in a blue moon it would make a difference. But most of the time we’d have to neglect other duties, other people’s problems, in order to do it. Your decision not to wait for Saunders was a proper one. I’m sorry it worked out badly but that was the luck of the draw. You’ve nothing to reproach yourself for.’

  She didn’t understand his fierce look. Words rushed from him in brief, savage torrent. ‘Have you any idea the number of times I’ve been told that?’

  She blinked, surprised by his vehemence. ‘DI Clarke, you mean?’

  ‘Alan. Lucy. Colleagues, acquaintances, friends, family – dear God, so many I’ve trouble remembering them all!’ He spun off the chair with an abrupt, fluid movement as if he might leave the hurt behind, and fetched up by the window looking down at the car park. His voice was bitter. ‘You must have heard of Donovan’s Luck. Even at Headquarters they’ve heard of Donovan’s Luck.’

  She didn’t know whether honesty would appease or disappoint him. ‘No. Sorry.’ She could have left it at that. But after a moment she added, ‘What do you mean?’

  He looked round with a twisted parody of a smile. ‘It’s a bit like Hobson’s Choice – it’s no luck at all. I get people hurt. Sometimes I get them killed. It’s never my fault. Only people who work with me, and people who know me, and in the dim and distant past people I dared care about, drop like flies round me. It’s like carrying the plague, you know? I don’t get it myself – OK, a bit of a side-swipe from the car that killed Alan – but mostly I’m left standing in a sea of bodies. These days I use a loose-leaf address book: it’s easier to up-date.’

  She didn’t know what to say. It was tempting to dismiss it as hysteria, but though he was clearly depressed she didn’t see him as either hysterical or self-indulgent. So maybe he did have bad luck. No, that wasn’t what he was saying – that he was bad luck. To people around him. People like her.

  She dismissed that with a quick shrug, as if it were an insect that had settled on her, cleared her throat, and picked up the print-out again. ‘Where were we – Taylor? No, we did him. What about Gregory – Miss Marjorie Gregory, Hampton Cottages? Did anyone feel strongly enough about an eighty-seven-year-old maiden lady living in sheltered accommodation to murder three people over a botched operation four years ago?’

  Donovan left the window and slouched back to his chair. He looked awkward, avoiding her gaze as if regretting his outburst. His index finger, strong, narrow, and slightly crooked like a raptor’s talon, scored down the page in search of Miss Gregory. Not finding her on the first sheet he flipped to the second, then to the third. Then the moving finger stopped and tapped once, and Donovan said, ‘Hold on,’ in a puzzled, pensive tone that made Liz look up.

  ‘You’ve got Miss Gregory too?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Er – go back a bit. What have you got on Swann again?’

  She read it out. ‘But it’s a different Swann. The hernia op was a baby. The death was a middle-aged woman.’

  ‘Yeah. But I think it’s the same family.’

  Chapter Eight

  Liz studied the relevant entries. There were no obvious connections. Certainly the address was different.

  ‘What makes you think so?’ It was possible the family had moved in the last four years, more likely that there were two Swann families in Castlemere.

  ‘I’ve met them,’ said Donovan. ‘Well, more than that actually. It was George Swann stepped in when I was having the crap beaten out of me down at the cemetery. His wife’s grave’s near Alan’s, she’s not been there much longer. Swann was planting some flowers. He had his kid beside him in one of them buggy things.’

  Liz thought about it, dismissed it. ‘Coincidence. He wouldn’t have a five-year-old in a pushchair.’

  Donovan shook his head. ‘He called the kid Danny. The baby’s down on the theatre list as Daniel Swann. At the time I didn’t register it but there was something wrong with the child. It kind of looks through you. Maybe it can’t walk.’

  ‘And this Mary was his wife?’

  ‘That I can’t swear to. But she died a fortnight ago and this grave’s a few days older than Alan’s so yes, I guess that’s Mary Swann.’

  They sat back, looking at each other, unsure what it meant. ‘How could he blame Saunders for the death of his wife?’

  Donovan shrugged. ‘Search me. How could he think he’s free to act if he has a retarded five-year-old to look after?’

  ‘It doesn’t hang together, does it? Do you know what he does for a living?’

  ‘He’s an antiques dealer. Shop in Castle Place, you’ve probably seen it – that’s the address given for Mary Swann. They must have sold their house.’

  ‘Antiques,’ mused Liz. ‘Not really Mac the Knife territory, is it?’

  ‘You think not? There’s big money in antiques, and it’s harder to prove who owns them than a car or a video. No serial numbers. There are villains enough in the antiques trade. I just wouldn’t have said George Swann was one of them.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Oh – pretty average. Mid-forties maybe. Decent kind of individual. Gentle, you know?’ He grinned suddenly. ‘You appreciate gentleness when you’ve just had three feet of chain wrapped round your head.’ His eyes changed then, grew sharp. ‘So average, in fact, he could be every third man in Castlemere.’

  Liz understood. ‘And he had a gun?’

  ‘Well, yes and no. It was a gun – a pistol, not a shotgun, First World War job I think – but it wasn’t capable of being fired. I checked while he was driving me to the hospital. It was in a trunk of stuff he bought once, he said, he hung on to it for fear of being held up sometime. I told you antiques wasn’t that genteel a trade.’

  ‘I suppose, though,’ Liz said slowly, ‘a man who could come by one gun in the way of business might come by another. What kind of car does he have?’

  Something like a shock-wave swamped Donovan’s expression. His head rocked back and he groaned. When he surfaced his face was rigid and there was a breathless quality to his voice. ‘Oh dear God … Detective, is it? I get paid for being a detective? I knew what that porter said meant something to me, I just couldn’t get hold of it. I don’t know what kind of a car it was. I was a bit groggy, OK? But the thing you couldn’t miss if you’d half an eye in your head was, it was yellow.’

  The first thing new staff at Castle General learned about Desmond Hawley was that the chief administrator was three different men. With the consultants he was punctilio
us, with junior doctors and nurses superior, with domestic staff so overweening as to leave scant change out of rude. So none of his fellow employees would have been surprised to know that, just as he treated Inspector Graham in a different manner to Sergeant Donovan, so he treated Chief Inspector Shapiro in a different manner to Inspector Graham.

  His manner was not all that had changed. His perception of how this might turn out had moved on too. He no longer believed it was possible to avoid scandal. His priority now was to establish that what happened was the fault of individual members of staff, not of the hospital.

  Ushering Shapiro to a chair in his office he launched a pre-emptive strike. ‘I was about to call you, Chief Inspector. I’ve just heard about Dr Saunders. I think I know what this is all about.’ He told the story of George Swann who believed his child was a victim of medical negligence.

  Shapiro stopped him to make a phone call, then asked him to continue.

  ‘I had no idea,’ insisted Hawley, ‘that the poor man had become demented. I knew he blamed us for his son’s condition but that’s not uncommon. People don’t realize that surgery is not an exact science. Every year something that works fine for ninety-nine patients makes the hundredth worse. But people think we’re only doing our job when it comes out right and must have been negligent when it comes out wrong.’

  ‘Swann accused Dr Saunders of negligence?’

  The administrator sniffed. ‘He accused everyone of negligence. At first he was upset, which was understandable. Later he became obsessive. He waylaid members of staff and tried to bully confessions out of them. We received letters on his behalf from half the solicitors in Castlemere. Of course I put it in the hands of our lawyers and let them deal with him. I’m a busy man, Chief Inspector: I sympathized, I assured him that what happened to his baby was nobody’s fault, but I really wasn’t prepared to listen to his tirades month after month.

  ‘I said if he thought he had a case against us he must pursue it. I didn’t expect him to get anywhere and he didn’t. But it took him four years to accept that. At least, I thought he’d accepted it. We got a letter from his solicitor – his last solicitor – a month ago saying he was taking no further action.’

  It was a text-book description of a bureaucrat stonewalling. Shapiro could imagine the effect it had on the bereaved man. ‘Did you ask the surgical team about the case?’

  ‘Of course. They said the operation went smoothly. I interviewed them individually and put to them Swann’s allegation that Dr Saunders was intoxicated. They all denied it, including Staff Nurse Carson whom Swann said he had the story from. What more was I to do? I’d no reason to call them liars. I still haven’t. It still seems likeliest to me that Mr Swann was wrong, that he believed it but he was wrong. People are not at their most rational when their emotions are involved.’

  Shapiro nodded slowly. He refrained from observing that people are not at their most truthful when their jobs are involved either. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t tell us this when Kerry Page was murdered.’

  Mr Hawley was apologetic. ‘Chief Inspector, if it had occurred to me I would have done. There was no reason to think her death had anything to do with the hospital. I understood her husband was the prime suspect.’

  ‘And when Mrs Board was shot outside the nurses’home?’

  ‘I remembered, of course, that they’d worked together. But I still didn’t make the connection. It was four years ago, and anyway it seemed Swann had finally bowed to the inevitable. I’d told Mrs Board he’d dropped it, phoned Dr Saunders to tell him, and he said he’d let Mrs Page know – apparently he saw her from time to time, they worked for the same organization as you know. Then I drew a line under it. Only when Dr Saunders too was killed was the connection with the Swann case apparent to me.’

  Shapiro breathed heavily down his ancestral nose. The man was clever: he knew stupidity wasn’t a criminal act. ‘If you’d told Inspector Graham what you’ve told me, Emil Saunders would still be alive. I don’t think you’re legally culpable of his death. But between you and me, Mr Hawley, I reckon you’re responsible for it. If you’d been a little less concerned with the hospital’s reputation and a little more concerned about the welfare of its patients and staff, none of this need have happened. Your attitude drove George Swann to a kind of madness and you let him kill three people rather than admit it. Even if the law has no call on you, I’d like to think your own conscience had.’ He sighed. ‘But I’d be kidding myself, wouldn’t I, Mr Hawley?’

  As they stared at each other across the administrator’s desk the phone rang. After a long pause Hawley picked it up. Then he passed it to Shapiro. ‘Your office, Chief Inspector.’

  Liz sent a message to Shapiro to meet them at the shop. She still didn’t know how it was going to work out but she believed they were on the right trail now.

  As they hurried to her car she glanced at Donovan’s arm. ‘If this gets rough will you be able to cope? I could second a beefy constable.’

  Donovan shook his head. ‘Swann won’t get rough. I told you, he’s a gentle man.’

  Liz gave him a sceptical look. ‘Dr Saunders might not agree with you.’

  Donovan rocked his good hand. ‘What happened to Saunders was four years in the making. You can build up a lot of hate in four years. I don’t think that basically he’s a violent man – a man who’d react violently to anyone crossing him.’

  ‘He might consider being arrested for murder as rather more than just being crossed,’ murmured Liz.

  ‘No. It’s like you said: he doesn’t care what happens to him. If we get to him in time he’ll go to prison; if we don’t he’ll kill himself. It’s all the same to him. He’s done what he set out to do, he doesn’t care what happens now.’

  Liz drove the dark canyons of narrow streets hemmed in by high black buildings rather faster than she could have justified to Traffic Branch.

  Castle Place was the oldest part of town, older even than the canal basin and the warehouses. The current buildings were Georgian – workaday rather than Grand Design Georgian but pleasing in their proportions, although unfortunate alterations, in the way of plate-glass shop-fronts, neon signs, and low-maintenance energy efficient double-glazing, had been added to many of them. The ruins on Castle Mount, not much more now than a jumble of stone piers towering against the sky, glowered down in mute disapproval.

  Castle Antiques was one of the prettier buildings in the square. The ground floor had been painted Wedgwood blue with the frames of the twelve-pane windows picked out in white. The name, and that of George Swann, Proprietor, arched in curly script over the elegant fan light of the doorcase. It all looked original. Of course, an antiques dealer would have the inside track when it came to restoration.

  But the other thing Liz noticed about Castle Antiques was that while a great deal of work had been done to it, with both skill and taste employed in its renovation, very little had been done recently. The paint was showing signs of wear and a cracked drain-pipe had left a trail of mossy damp down one side of the frontage. With a little imagination, Liz thought, you could suppose it had been untouched for four years.

  The heavy wooden door, cherry-red, was locked. A card in the window read Closed. There was no sign of movement in the shop or at the windows above in response to Liz’s knock. She stared at the building in dismay. That door wouldn’t yield to a good kick: it would take tools and time and they had neither. She could have broken a window but the narrow mullions would have kept a child out and there were locks on the fastenings.

  ‘Round the back,’ Donovan said curtly, and she turned to see him sprint off round the comer. Abandoning the unassailable front she followed.

  A narrow entry gave access to the back yards. Logic said there was one but you had to know where to look, for it opened on to the side-street through what looked like someone’s garage door. Diving through in Donovan’s wake Liz found herself in the kind of townscape where the Artful Dodger would have felt at home: close, sunless, grimy,
confusing. It did not escape her notice that Donovan seemed at home here too.

  He’d counted the front doors on Castle Place and now he was counting the yard doors. When the numbers tallied he threw the door open almost without breaking pace. Liz, breathless, was on his heels as he crossed to the back of the house through a yard full of broken drawers and wardrobe doors: the bones of old furniture that had gone there to die.

  The back door was up a flight of stone steps; it too was locked. But the kitchen window was modern and big enough to admit whatever light found its way into the yard. Donovan hurled half a Windsor chair through it and glass crashed into the stone sink within and on to the steps without.

  But his wrist was a significant handicap and Liz couldn’t see how he could climb over to the window one-handed, though she had no doubt that if he’d been alone he would have tried. A detective sergeant with a damaged wrist had his limitations but one with a broken neck would be a positive liability. She laid her hand on his arm. ‘Step aside, Sergeant. This is a job for Wonder Woman.’

  While Donovan stared, steadying herself on his shoulder she climbed first on to the rail, then across to the windowsill. Avoiding the glass as best she could she snaked through and disappeared inside. A moment later the key turned in the lock and she opened the door, sucking a cut finger. ‘Impressed?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’d never catch the real Wonder Woman bleeding.’

  They moved into the house, keeping together, unsure what they would find: a multiple murderer, the body of a multiple murderer, or an irate antiques dealer demanding compensation for his broken window.

  The kitchen no longer performed its original function but, with the rest of the ground floor, served the shop. Two of the four rooms connected through an arch to make a showroom, behind were an office and the kitchen which was used for cleaning and repairs. They checked each room but found no one. Liz moved towards the stairs.

  Without seeming to hurry Donovan got there first. ‘My turn, ma’am.’