First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Kate, shut up,’ Hattie said amiably. ‘It’s nothing like that, George, honestly. It’s only a little bit of truth blown up into a socking great balloon. Why George, by the bye? I’ve been longing to find out.’

  ‘A chauvinist grandfather, feminist mum,’ Kate said and George blinked.

  ‘Ye gods, is there nothing people here don’t manage to find out?’ she protested, and it was Kate’s turn to laugh.

  ‘You’ve forgotten you told me all about it,’ she said. ‘At the Barrie party, remember? That your grandfather left all his money to his only daughter’s child on condition it was called after him. So your ma did.’

  George bit her lip. ‘Sorry. Yes, I did tell you, didn’t I. And yes, that’s pretty well it.’

  ‘What did he do when he found out you were a girl, and not the boy he wanted?’ Hattie asked.

  ‘He never did. Died before I was born. He knew he was going to. He had terminal cancer, prostate.’ She chuckled. ‘Ma said he’d have gone bananas at first, but he’d have gotten over it. He liked people with a bit of sass about them and that was why really he liked Ma, even if she was the wrong sort.’

  ‘He’d have liked you then,’ Kate said firmly. ‘Let me know how it all works out, anyway. Have to fly. Good hunting, George. See you, Hattie,’ and she went, hurrying away in her usual rushed manner.

  There was a little silence and then George said carefully, ‘What have they told you about me, then, your nurses? Ah – I mean, about who I’ve been going around with?’

  Hattie grinned. ‘Not a lot, don’t worry. It’s just that someone saw you in the local with Toby having a drink and someone else saw you in that restaurant down by the river and there it is – that’s all they need to tie two people together with bonds of steel and roll them down an aisle somewhere. They should have known better, seeing it was Toby Bellamy.’

  ‘Oh?’ George was studiedly non-committal. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, you are one of us, aren’t you?’ Hattie said. ‘Gossip with the best. Lovely!’

  ‘I’ve always been interested in my fellow man,’ George allowed, and then added hastily, ‘And woman.’

  ‘That goes without saying. Well, I suppose …’ Hattie made a face and looked down at the table. ‘I wish I’d not started this, actually.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It depends on how far – I mean on how right the girls were.’

  ‘They weren’t right at all,’ George said. ‘Yes, we had a drink and went out for a meal a few times, but as for the bonds of steel, phooey.’

  ‘Oh, I am glad to hear it!’ Hattie said with such heartfelt sincerity that George opened her eyes wide at her.

  ‘Are you going to tell me he’s the hospital bluebeard?’

  ‘He hasn’t killed anyone yet. Not to my knowledge,’ Hattie said in all seriousness. ‘But I suppose you could say …’

  ‘Say what?’ Hattie had stopped and was looking at George a little anxiously.

  ‘Well, if he isn’t any special sort of friend, I must say I’m glad. Not that it’s any of my affair, you understand, but I don’t like to see someone getting tangled up for nothing. Especially a foreigner. Oh, Lor’, I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’

  George laughed. This woman was an endearing mixture of candour and sharp-wittedness, very like her mother, and that made her feel comfortable. ‘I know what you mean. I’m a poor lost lone crittur in a strange land.’

  ‘Oh, no. I mean, it’s obvious you can cope perfectly well. But the thing is that sometimes when you know something about a person you ought to advise other people about them.’

  ‘I think it’d help if you came right out with it,’ George said. ‘I’m getting very confused here.’

  ‘Oh well, it’s Toby, the sort he is. He’s a nice man, don’t get me wrong. Very amusing, good company. He and my Sam – you know, the chap Kate told you about’ – and she went a little pink with the pleasure of saying the name –’ they know each other and get on very well. And that’s a sort of recommendation because Sam has this proclivity for seeing through people. It’s just that –’ She shrugged. ‘Bellamy’s unreliable, when it comes to women.’

  ‘In what way unreliable?’

  ‘Well, he’s had dinner at my house twice in the past year because Sam’s asked him, and both times he brought Felicity Oxford, and I had the impression that –’ Again she shrugged. ‘Well, let’s say they seemed to be on comfortable terms, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Like an item.’

  ‘You could say so.’

  ‘It’s weird,’ George burst out after a moment. ‘I just can’t handle you people. Guys are so …’ She shook her head. ‘Why didn’t Toby Bellamy say to me he was just being friendly? I mean, I’m used to people saying straight out if they want to date you or if they just want to be friendly and I got the impression I was being dated. But then he goes and watches her – Felicity Oxford – at the concert like she was made of gold dust.’ She shook her head again. ‘I just don’t know where I am.’

  ‘He was being friendly,’ Hattie said firmly. ‘It has to be. I suppose you’re right: people in this country don’t make a clear line between friendly and sexy the way you do in the States. Here you can go round with someone out of – well, because you’re lonely or whatever, and then it sort of grows into something more. Or sometimes it doesn’t, but you’re still friends. At least that’s how it’s always been for me, and I imagine Toby Bellamy thinks the same way. And we go on making new friends with people even if we’re serious about someone else, sometimes. I’ve been out to drinks and supper with some of the people here even though I’m sort of serious about Sam. It’s all quite normal.’

  ‘It is in the States as well, believe it or not,’ George said a little drily. ‘Anyway, you’re warning me to keep off, is that it?’

  ‘Oh, no, not if you don’t want to. I mean not if you like him. And he can be good fun, I do agree. Nice and funny. No, I was just sort of letting you know that he seems to be spoken for. He was very taken with Felicity Oxford at one time. I have to be honest and say I haven’t seen so much of him lately, Sam’s been too busy to consider dinner parties and I’ve just not bothered.’

  ‘Anyway, thanks,’ George said, getting to her feet. ‘I must be going. Got a lot to do.’

  ‘You’re not angry, are you?’ Hattie looked up at her anxiously. ‘I really meant well.’

  ‘And you did well,’ George said. ‘I appreciate it. See you around.’ And she went loping off across the canteen, her white coat flying behind her with the speed of her walking, pushing her glasses back up her nose as she went. She’d certainly go on wearing them for a while yet, she told herself wrathfully. To think she’d actually been considering trying out those damned contact lenses again, the ones she’d got because Ian had told her she looked so much more appealing without spectacles on her nose. Well, Toby Bellamy was certainly not worth struggling with contact lenses for. Not if he was going to play fast and loose with her the way he had.

  She was standing in the lift on her way down to the ground floor when she realized how stupid she was being, carrying on inside her head like some sort of senior high school prom queen. Toby Bellamy had been friendly, that was all; he’d never said a word out of place, never made a pass, so why should she think he’d misbehaved simply because he was tied up with Felicity Oxford? She had been the one to jump to conclusions; he’d never behaved badly at all. If she’d gone into contact lenses it’d have been a waste of effort clearly, but it would have been entirely her own fault.

  To hell with you, she muttered under her breath as she reached the bottom and the doors began to whisper open. She began to lecture him inside her head.

  If you prefer to have an affair with a married woman who looks like a refugee from a film set, you go right ahead. Don’t you think I give a damn, because I don’t.

  The doors were open now and she moved forwards, just as the person who had been waiting to come in did the same, and he stepped back wh
en he saw her and exclaimed, ‘Well, there’s handy! I was going to come looking for you.’

  She put her hand behind her to hold open the door to the lift though it hissed a little, and heaved against her restraint. ‘You’ll miss your ride,’ she said. ‘Hurry along.’

  ‘It can wait,’ Toby stepped to one side to let another couple of passengers pass. ‘It’s just a routine round I’m off to. So tell me, how did the PM go?’

  She looked at him sharply as the doors sighed to behind her and the lift went away. ‘What PM?’

  ‘Oh, come on, George! Richard Oxford’s, of course. Have you found out what happened? Did he fall or was he pushed? Was it natural causes or foul play? Was it the butler or the chauffeur or one of the other servants he had to have to maintain his glorious lifestyle?’

  ‘I really can’t say,’ she said. ‘The inquest’ll be –’

  ‘Oh, George, don’t be so stuffy. You can tell me.’

  She looked at him very directly. ‘Why? So you can run and tell Felicity Oxford?’

  ‘I should imagine she’d be told immediately anyway,’ he said, frowning a little. ‘What are you being so cagey about?’

  She tried to pass him but he didn’t move and she had to stay where she was. ‘It’s not right to give out this sort of information before an inquest,’ she said a little primly. ‘Also –’

  He whistled. ‘Jesus, so it was a dodgy one? Someone did do for him?’

  She frowned. ‘I said no such thing!’

  ‘You’re implying it. Like crazy. Come on, George, cough up the news. Did someone get rid of the old bastard?’

  ‘I didn’t know he was an old bastard.’ She was icy now, staring at him hard. ‘Or that anyone would want to be rid of him.’

  He leaned against the side of the lift, leaving the way clear for her to go. But she stayed where she was. ‘Oh, I can imagine lots of people’d want to be rid of him. He was an old – well, let’s just say he was hard to love.’

  ‘So his wife, your friend Felicity, will be happy to be rid of him, is that it?’

  He lifted a brow, watching her face all the time. ‘Now, what has poor old Fliss done to you that your voice should take on such a sneer when you say her name?’

  ‘I’m not sneering! I’m just reacting to your – your unseemly curiosity about a case which is none of your affair.’

  ‘Unseemly? Well, there’s a handsome word for a handsome lady to throw out. Unseemly, is it? Let’s just say that I think it is very seemly to be concerned about the feelings of the living rather than the sins of the dead. And I also think it’d be interesting to say the least to know whether Fliss is a rich widow by someone’s direct action or whether it was the beneficence of providence. Frankly, I’d assumed he’d had an infarct or a CVA, but you made such a song and dance over it, it’s obviously something more and –’

  ‘It is nothing of the sort!’ George said, a little alarmed now. The last thing she wanted was for this hotbed of gossip to seethe with the news that Oxford had died of unnatural causes when she had no idea yet whether he had or not. And, in fact, was pretty sure he hadn’t. Oh, God, she said inside her head. Why the hell did I start this whole goddamned fuss? Stupid bitch you are, you know that? A stupid bitch. ‘I just don’t know yet. I’m waiting for results of investigations.’

  ‘Then why did you imply that the death was a dubious one?’

  ‘Because I don’t know yet! That’s all!’

  He looked at her, chewing his upper lip, and then said abruptly, ‘This is daft, isn’t it? We’re fighting over nothing. Look, meet you tonight at the pub, hmm? You’ll need supper of some sort if you’ve just come down from the canteen lunch, as I imagine you have. Then maybe we can start again, and sort ourselves out. No time now.’

  She opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of his offer, and then temporized. ‘I’d planned a swim and fish and chips in my room,’ she said. ‘And anyway –’

  ‘No anyway,’ he said firmly. ‘It sounds like a great idea. I can get to the pool around’ – he looked at his watch – ‘say, seven o’clock. All right? And then we can have our fish and chips at that place in Cable Street. It’s only a few minutes walk. Great! I’ll see you there then. I’ll look forward to it.’

  The lift came down again and spilled a couple of people into the corridor. He went in and reached for the button. ‘Don’t be late,’ he said, flashing a grin, and the doors closed and he was gone, leaving her trying to work out how she felt about the evening. Would she go, or send a note to his office to tell him she couldn’t?

  She started across the courtyard on her way back to her department, thinking hard. Maybe she was just being silly after all. Why shouldn’t he be a friend as well as having an affair with Felicity Oxford? She’d heard that men often did like to have sexy relationships with married women; they were less likely to make life difficult for them. And then she thought, as she reached the main door to the path lab. But she’s not a married woman. She’s a widow. Maybe it’ll be different now. Maybe his interest in what Richard Oxford died of is more than just the normal gossipy curiosity of the hospital. Maybe –

  I will go, she thought as she marched towards her office. I will. It could be interesting to find out why Toby Bellamy is interested to know if there is something fishy about Oxford’s death, and the results’ll be here soon, and then – and she pushed her door open and hurried in, knowing the investigation results should be on her desk by now, and having to admit to herself that she wanted them to show something that would make her doubts more concrete. Partly to show Gus Hathaway that she was right, but now also to measure Toby Bellamy’s reaction to the news.

  The results were there, tucked into a neat plastic envelope. She picked them up with fingers shaking slightly with excitement.

  She read them through with great care, but there wasn’t a thing to show for her efforts. The blood picture, the report said, had been normal in every way. There had been no evidence of any drug or any other substance that shouldn’t be there. No codeine, no benzodiazapines, no cocaine, no opiates, nothing at all unusual.

  She turned to the other report hopefully and again struck out. The swabs from the nose and mouth had grown nothing startling after twenty-four hours, and though they would continue to observe the cultures nothing was expected to change there. The rectal swab showed nothing more surprising than a little lanolin and the skin swabs were just as unrevealing. The man had used soap, body cream and cologne before he’d climbed into his elaborate bed, but there was nothing else. Richard Oxford had simply stopped breathing. And there seemed to be no reason why.

  And that, George thought, her forehead creasing as she concentrated, really was rather odd. There had to be some reason for this death. Her inability to pinpoint it was beginning to chafe; her whole raison d’être was her curiosity, her need to know. And Richard Oxford was blocking that. Whether it was a police matter or not was now, she decided, beside the point. She wanted to know for her own sake. And somehow she’d find out.

  11

  The pool was inhabited (the word ‘infested’ came to mind, but she dismissed it) by a large number of small boys, all intent on drowning each other while being bawled at by a species of youth-club leader who seemed incapable of controlling them. She struggled her way through them for fifteen lengths before giving up and hauling herself on to the edge of the deep end, to sit a little breathlessly, watching the children being shepherded into a noisy game of water polo. She was less than fit; time she started regular exercise again. She’d got out of the habit in the Ian days, because he’d found it rather absurd that she should take the time to jog around the hospital grounds at least three evenings a week, accusing her of being a Californian health freak; which had so offended her Yankee heart – after all, her mother had come from Massachusetts – that she’d given it up. Now she was paying the price, and she patted her belly, suspecting that it was softer than it should be. His voice behind her came a little muffled against the noise from the shrie
king ball players and the inevitable echo of the great roof, and she turned to peer upwards, startled at the suddenness of his arrival.

  ‘It looks fine to me. Like the rest of you. A very agreeable sight.’

  Bellamy was standing in a comfortable relaxed pose that seemed natural but which she suspected was calculated to show his body to its best advantage; a calculation that had succeeded. He was flat of belly and broad of chest with none of the softening under the ribs that gave away the couch potato in the making, and he had just enough hair and just enough muscle definition to look interesting without looking self-absorbed.

  He grinned at her. ‘How much have you done?’

  ‘Fifteen laps.’

  He squinted at the pool. ‘It’s around thirty-five metres, I’d say. You need another ten to make it the half mile or thereabouts. Race you.’

  ‘I’m not a racer,’ she said. ‘And anyway, these kids …’

  But they were at last getting out, being shooed by a forceful lifeguard in a red swimsuit who was clearly as bored with them as everyone else. The pool lay at her feet, blue, glinting and attractive, with only half a dozen or so sedate adult swimmers in it and both the lanes ahead of them totally empty and inviting in the extreme.

  He sat down alongside her and said, ‘We’ll take it from a sitting start then, on three. One, two, three –’

  She couldn’t refuse the challenge, and almost instinctively was away, her lack of fitness and breath quite forgotten under the spur of competition, and for the next fifteen minutes. It was hard work because he was a thrifty swimmer, making every move work for him; but she had been well trained in her school days, and managed to keep up with him. She was a shade faster on the turns, which helped, and by the time she’d ended her tenth lap she was about two metres ahead. She finished in a last triumphant kick of her legs that sent spray into his face.

  ‘You win,’ he gasped. ‘Let me make it another couple –’ and was away in a strong plunging crawl that was agreeable to watch. He was certainly a well-made man, she told herself, and sat there comfortably catching her breath and letting the sense of wellbeing that exercise always gave her creep all through her. Endorphins, she thought vaguely; that’s what it is. Endorphins, but to hell with physiology. Forget you’re a doctor and just enjoy yourself.