First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘They’ll say, “Ta and go away and play, and we’ll call you next time there’s a murder, and you’ll have to wait till we’ve done all our detecting before you hear another thing about it.” Where’s the fun in that?’

  ‘I’ve told you before, this isn’t about fun. It’s about a man who died.’

  ‘A man no one could stand,’ Jerry said. ‘I can’t be doing with all this mealy-mouthed nonsense that suggests that because a man’s kicked the bucket he’s suddenly deified. He was a nasty shit before and he still is, even if he is dead. We might as well get some fun out of him. We never did get much when he was alive.’

  ‘Jerry, why are you so – so hostile to him?’ She was curious, but puzzled too. Jerry had gone a little white around the mouth and seemed genuinely angry, not his usual bantering self at all.

  ‘Hostile …’ He mimicked her accent and laughed. ‘Hostile is what I am, Dr B. You’ll have to change your style a bit if you want them to be really nice to you around here.’

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’ She was sharper now. ‘Why are you so angry about Oxford? Why does it matter to you that you should be able to tell the world about how he died?’ Jerry got up and moved across the room. She watched him, her puzzlement deepening into suspicion. ‘You’ll have to tell me, won’t you? Now you’ve got this far.’

  ‘How far? I haven’t got anywhere. You’ve just jumped to a conclusion.’

  ‘You’ve pushed me to it,’ she said, and then in a gentler tone added, ‘Oh, come on Jerry! I can’t imagine it’s anything that awful.’

  ‘I’m not sure, all of a sudden.’ He turned to look at her and she was startled at the strain in his face. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it before. I mean, that it had to be someone here, from the hospital, who killed him. I sort of thought it could be someone from, well, anywhere.’

  ‘It could.’

  ‘But you said –’

  ‘I said it would be hard for someone outside the hospital to get their hands on a quantity of digitalis. As it would be for them to get it into the tube, wouldn’t it? They’d need some equipment?’

  ‘A syringe?’

  She shook her head. ‘Did you find any needle holes in the tube? Or didn’t you squeeze it to get the sample out to test? If you did, you would have spotted any hole at once by the worm of excipient that would have emerged.’

  ‘There wasn’t a hole,’ he said and his voice was low now. He didn’t take his eyes from her.

  ‘So the tube had to be tampered with another way?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘It’s obvious to me how. Isn’t it to you?’

  ‘No, or at least …’ He frowned and then shook his head. ‘I don’t really know. Open the end and then reroll it?’

  ‘It’d show when you looked at it. I looked at all those tubes. They were virginal. Every one of them – except the one that had been started and that was just like the others at the base. So, as I see it, it’s very possible – even very likely – that the tampering was done here in the pharmacy. They fill their own tubes there, don’t they?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘So, there you are. It’s very reasonable to assume it was someone at the hospital who did it, though not absolutely certain. But it had to be someone with access to the pharmacy when no one else was in it to see what was going on. And you say that’s what worries you …’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ he said and came and sat down in the chair again. ‘Look, I didn’t do anything to the old bugger. I hated him, sure I did. I had plenty of reason. He – he treated me like a – like – He was bloody rude.’

  She said nothing, just sat and looked at him, waiting for him to go on. Unwillingly at first but then in a rush, he did.

  ‘I had daft notions of going on up the career ladder at one time. Thought I’d get more qualifications, maybe go into the private sector, make myself a little bomb in my own private lab. There’re people in the Harley Street setups who do that. But I had no money and I thought, Old Oxford hangs around here all the time, reckons he cares about hospitals and so forth, well, let’s see what he might do for me. After all, it’d be for the ultimate good of patients, wouldn’t it? So I wrote and asked for a loan. Not a gift, mind you. I didn’t want a hand-out. Just a loan to get me going. And the bastard sent me the nastiest and most insulting letter you ever … Well!’ He shook his head. ‘It really was hateful, so of course I hated him. But not enough to try to kill him! Only enough to want to make people laugh at him. Making people laugh is what I do very well. Turning that old buzzard into a hoot struck me as a great way to get my own back.’

  ‘Have you still got the letter?’

  ‘Still – What do you take me for? Of course I chucked it. So would you have done. Called me a parasite, he did, said I was a – well, just take it from me, it was really terrible. You could see the man was a writer, I’ll grant him that. He really got under my skin. I was glad when I heard he’d died, and now I know someone killed him, good luck to him, say I. I hope they never catch him.’

  ‘Until he does it to someone else?’

  Jerry looked at her uncertainly. ‘That’s jumping to conclusions again.’

  ‘Maybe. But let’s face it, it’s a possibility. If it’s easy the first time and you get away with it, you’ll be tempted to keep on doing it. I would. Wouldn’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t get me admitting I’d even think of killing a person once, let alone twice. I told you I was mad, but I just laugh at them.’

  ‘Well, OK, Jerry. But I still have to say you can’t talk about this to anyone outside this office. Not till I say so.’

  ‘The others already know,’ Jerry said. ‘And that means the rest of the hospital does by now.’

  ‘Oh, shit! How can they? Oh, I suppose it was inevitable.’

  ‘We sit side by side, after all. And Sheila’s in and out like a yo-yo. And with her nose for a story …’

  ‘I’d better warn them at the station,’ she said. She got to her feet and swept the papers together into a bundle. ‘What’s the time? Nearly five. They should still be there. Tell Sheila to lock up. I’ll go there with this stuff now and talk to Hathaway.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him about me?’

  She looked back at him sitting there at the desk, his rumpled fair hair springing around his face in a particularly endearing way and felt her own face soften.

  ‘I might have to, Jerry. It wouldn’t do to keep it quiet,’ she began and to her surprise he nodded.

  ‘I’d rather you did. The sooner they know I had a grudge the better. Then they can forget all about me. Because it’s obvious I couldn’t have done it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He sighed a little theatrically. ‘Dear Dr B., I’m my own best proof of innocence. Who did the lab tests that uncovered how it was done? I did! If I’d put the stuff there myself, would I, do you think, have told you I’d found it afterwards? Call yourself a pathologist? Garn! I could beat you at your own game.’

  She was so relieved she laughed aloud and came back to her desk to reach over and push at his shoulder. ‘You’re a – you’re the pits!’ she said. ‘I’d have thought it through eventually, I dare say, but yes, you’re right.’

  He grinned a little shakily. ‘Well, I have to say I only just realized it myself. But you gave me a bad ten minutes there.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But that’s the trouble with murder. It obviously does make you get odd ideas. Even about people you like.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, at any rate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you like me.’

  She straightened. ‘You’ll do, buddy. Now, go on. Get the place cleaned up and tell the others. I’ll see you in the morning. Right now I have to go down to Ratcliffe Street.’

  ‘The nick,’ he said and got to his feet a little heavily. ‘Well, sooner you than me, thanks very much. Even though I’m as innocent as the driven whatsit, I don’t fancy hanging ar
ound cop shops.’

  The police station was fairly quiet when she got there: just three people were sitting on the benches in the outer office waiting to talk to the duty sergeant and he, when he saw her, bobbed his head and pushed the bell beneath his high desk. The uniformed policeman who popped his head out of the inner office in response was instructed to ‘take the doctor up to Mr Hathaway sharpish. Nice to see you, doctor.’ The waiting people all turned and looked at her doggishly and she tried a vague smile at them as she followed the policeman up to the CID room, feeling slightly guilty. It was a knee-jerk reaction of the silliest kind, she knew, and particularly silly for a highly qualified forensic pathologist, but there it was: she never felt quite as comfortable in a police station as she might.

  The lights were burning in all the offices and there was a cheerful rattle of typewriters and the sound of a great many loud voices as people called to each other from one room to another. The uniformed man ignored it all, and led her at once to a corner door on which he tapped politely and then left her. She had to respond to Hathaway’s muffled call by pushing the door open herself and marching in.

  ‘Hey, this is unexpected,’ he said after peering at her for a moment. He stood up. He was in his shirt sleeves and had left his tie dangling over the jacket which he had hung lopsidedly on the back of his chair. He looked tired, she thought and was annoyed with herself for noticing. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve got the answers,’ she said, standing just inside the doorway, her hands in her deep pockets. She could feel the folded sheets plump and firm against her touch, but she didn’t take them out.

  ‘Have you, by cracky? That’s a grand piece of – And looking at your face I’d say it was interesting.’

  ‘Very much so,’ she said. She came further in as he came round his desk to pull a chair forward for her and offered to take her coat. She shook her head, feeling safer inside its thick folds somehow, a reaction she knew was absurd but did not resist.

  ‘You needn’t have come over on your own on such a mucky evening,’ he said. ‘I’d have come and got ’em. Sent a messenger or something.’

  ‘Am I in the way?’

  ‘Not in the least. Don’t be so spiky. OK, let’s be looking at it.’

  She pulled out the papers, smoothed them and put them in front of him. He sat down again and pored over them, his head propped up on both fists. Behind her she could hear the people outside still talking loudly, and the shrilling of phones and beyond that the noise of cars as they moved in and out of the police yard beneath the window. She felt a little dreamy, as though she weren’t here herself at all, really, but imagining all this.

  ‘Well, that was a bit of a hit below the belt, wasn’t it?’ he said and grinned up at her and she came down to earth with a jolt.

  ‘Oh, God, not you too! I wonder how many variations there’ll be on the same joke? And you were the one who said haemorrhoids aren’t funny.’

  ‘They aren’t, but I have to tell you that haemorrhoid cream used as a murder weapon is bloody funny.’ He pulled the papers together and tidied them before pushing them into a plastic folder and adding them to the pile of similar folders on the tray at his right-hand side. ‘Well, well. Now we really will have to settle down to some hard work. Old-fashioned police work, lots of interrogating, lots of watching and lots of plodding. The dull bits. You’ve done the magic part, shown us how it was done, and I hand it to you, Dr B., I really do. You spotted it was a murder and now you’ve spotted how it was done.’ He stopped and stared at her for a moment, his eyes very bright and dark. ‘Put me out of my misery. What gave it away to you? How did you know it was a murder? Right at the start, I mean. What made you go on and on at it, all stubborn like?’

  She looked back at him and then couldn’t help it. She let her lips curve and said sweetly, ‘Intuition. Just my feminine intuition.’

  ‘Intuition!’ he said and leaned back in his chair so that his face was in the shadow and the brightness of his eyes seemed to disappear. ‘Such stuff! Well, as I say, from now on we’ve got to plod and do the boring bits. Real evidence, real work. Intuition’s no use for that. Anyway, ta, Dr B.’ He got to his feet and she looked up at him and frowned.

  ‘Do you have the idea you’re going to send me away now?’ she demanded.

  He looked a little surprised. ‘Why not? There’s nothing else, is there?’

  ‘There’s the whole case,’ she said. ‘I’m interested! I’m not going to be pushed out now just because the pathology’s all done with. Or apparently so. You never know what might still turn up.’

  ‘Oh. One of those, are you?’

  ‘One of those what?’

  ‘Nosy types.’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled again, even more sweetly. ‘Ever so nosy. I want to keep on working on this one. Find out why as well as how, and who.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got some ideas about who,’ he said. ‘Want to hear them?’ He was watching her closely now and she was suddenly a little uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes. If you’ll tell me.’

  ‘Glad to.’ He went round his desk to sit down again. ‘Let me give you a little basic lesson in detection, Dr B. Not that you really need it, I’m sure, but just to give you a freshener, you know what I mean? When it comes to murders most of ’em’s domestic.’

  ‘Domestic?’

  ‘Yes. That is, they’re done by someone the victim knows – knew – well. They’re done for nice domestic reasons. Jealousy and sex and money, all like that. In the real world, Dr B., here in Shadwell, we get a lot of sex murders. This one may be fancied up with Docklands development gloss and lotsa dosh but I don’t suppose it’s all that different from the sort of cases we get round the council estates.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you see that. So, I’m going to start in the obvious place as far as suspects are concerned.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  He lifted his brows gently. ‘Domestically. His wife, Dr B. His wife.’

  She nodded. ‘I see the sense of that.’

  ‘And also, of course, any – shall we say? – special friends of hers.’

  Her chest tightened suddenly. He was watching her so closely and seemed so intent on observing the most minute of responses in her that she found it unnerving. But she managed to look back at him calmly and raise her brows interrogatively.

  ‘Like boyfriends, Dr B.’

  ‘If she had any,’ she said and her lips felt a little stiff.

  ‘Oh, she had them. Well, one at any rate. Very close they were. Still may be for all I know. We’ll have to look into him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mmm. Friend of yours, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I rather thought you were going to say that,’ she said as equably as she could. ‘After all, the hospital community is a small one and most people tend to know each other in it.’

  ‘But she isn’t part of the hospital, is she?’

  ‘No. But Oxford was, very much so. So it makes sense that –’ She shook her head. ‘So you’re telling me that you’ll be investigating Mr Bellamy?’

  He looked almost disappointed and that pleased her. It was good to have cut across his bows this way. ‘It doesn’t worry you?’

  ‘Why should it? I doubt very much that he had anything to do with the man’s death, but of course you have to talk to everyone. It’s the plodder’s way, isn’t it?’

  ‘You could say that. All right, Dr B. There it is. I’ll let you know how we get on. Not that I have to, you understand, but I appreciate the interest of a colleague. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you will.’ And walked out of the office in as relaxed a manner as she could, pulling her coat around her as she went. He sat and watched her and she knew he was uncertain of the effect he had had on her and that helped a lot.

  But she still felt dreadful. So, the gossips at Old East were right. The police had already investigated and discovered th
at Toby Bellamy was indeed a woman eater. That meant he couldn’t care less about her. How could he if he was fooling around with Felicity Oxford? And maybe, as well as that, he was a murderer? It was a horrible thought, but she couldn’t banish it. And to top it all, she, stupid goddamn fool that she was, had let herself get far too fond of him. She’d done it again, but this time she couldn’t run away to a new hospital. Getting over Toby would be much harder than getting over Ian.

  20

  He caught up with her just as she walked out of the police station and into the street, and she yelped in surprise when he pulled at her coat sleeve.

  ‘I thought you were in a hurry for this information?’ he said reproachfully. ‘And then ye go walking past me as though you’d never seen me before in your life!’

  She blinked as she turned to stare at him in the dim light thrown by the station windows. ‘Oh! Mr Urquhart!’

  ‘Och, call me Michael, it’s easier.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Did I pass you? I didn’t mean to be rude. I was – I was thinking.’

  ‘Was the Guv’nor being tiresome?’

  ‘Oh, not that you’d notice. I mean, not really. Uh – do I understand you’ve got some information for me?’

  ‘I have at that,’ he said with great satisfaction. ‘It was easier than I’d ha’ hoped, and I’ve a fair surprise for you, indeed I have.’

  ‘Tell me!’ She began to feel better. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Well, not here!’ he protested. ‘Now, I’m away from here in just twenty minutes. If it’s all the same to you, we could perhaps meet somewhere and talk quietly. I don’t really fancy bein’ seen out here like this.’ He looked a little uneasily over his shoulder. ‘Not that I don’t have the right to talk to anyone I choose, d’you understand, but it might not be politic, me being junior as you might say and you being the doctor an’ all.’

  ‘Ye Gods, you Brits and your snobbery!’

  He opened his eyes wide at that. ‘Nothing of the sort! Snobbery’s no part of it. It’s no’ me, nor the others. It’s the Guv’nor I’m thinking of. It has nothing to do with class, everything to do with him being the sort of man that has to be in full control all the time. He has to know what everyone’s thinking as well as saying.’ He shook his head. ‘At the risk of shocking you, though I’ll not be able to do that easily, you being a doctor an’ all, I have to say that if he could he’d count the times we went off to the lavatory, that he would.’