First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  The eyes were open and gleaming in the mess of blood that was the face, but she recognized it easily and took a long breath.

  ‘Evenin’, Dr B.,’ Gus said and she lifted her head and peered into the shadows to see him standing with a couple of other people. ‘This, it seems, is –’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Mitchell.’

  ‘– Mr Formby,’ Gus said at the same moment. Then he stopped and looked at her sharply. ‘Here, he wasn’t a mate of yours, was he? If he was and you want me to find someone else to take over for you on this one, you just say the word.’

  ‘He wasn’t a mate,’ she said and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Bittacy should be here in a moment or two with my kit. I’ll wait for it before I do anything. Any idea what happened?’

  ‘He must have fallen,’ one of the people with Gus Hathaway said, stepping forward into the light, and she lifted her brows, a little surprised.

  ‘Professor Dieter! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came as soon as I heard from one of the porters,’ he said a little stuffily. ‘Who else would you expect to see?’

  ‘Mr Herne, perhaps,’ she said without stopping to think. ‘He’s the admin boss.’

  ‘And I am the senior medical person at Old East.’ He turned away and looked at Gus. ‘Is there any reason why I should not be here, Mr Hathaway? Am I in the way?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Gus said cordially. ‘Only it’s up to Dr Barnabas who gets involved with him medically, d’you see what I mean? She’s in charge of the body till after she’s done her bits and bobs. When she says it’s OK, and the Soco is done, I take over. But right now –’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Professor, I didn’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t be here!’ George said hastily. ‘I was just surprised. But of course it’s perfectly natural now I think of it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said coldly, turning away. ‘Mr Hathaway, I want to ask you …’ He went over to Hathaway and began to speak to him in a low voice so George felt herself to be snubbed and was irritated. Why shouldn’t she question his presence? He normally wasn’t at the hospital in the evening, she knew that; he always made sure he had the best of registrars for his patients and it was rare indeed there was any need to call him out of hours. He lived … where? She had been told but had to think hard to remember, and then it came back to her. Totteridge. He lived out in Totteridge, way to the north of the city, and it took him the best part of an hour and a quarter to drive in in the morning; he often complained about it at medical meetings. Even outside the rush hour it had to be a long drive for him; so why was he here at this time of night? She set her jaw to prevent herself asking him. To be this suspicious of everybody was absurd. No doubt he had an excellent reason.

  ‘I would like to get back to my work,’ she heard him say a little more loudly. ‘I really have to finish it today – I mean tonight – the seminar is tomorrow evening and it is most important.’

  ‘Of course, Professor,’ Gus said and stood aside. ‘I’ll let you know if I need any more from you. Goodnight.’

  The Professor moved back towards George on his way out of the little huddle behind the tarpaulin and he paused as he reached her. ‘Well, Dr Barnabas, this is a sad business, very sad.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously, not sure whether he wanted to say something important or just to show her that now he had delivered his snub there were no hard feelings. ‘I don’t know yet what happened, of course.’

  ‘A fall, I imagine. Checking some work here after the workmen had gone, and fell. He was a very devoted man, meticulous in his attention to detail, cared a great deal about his responsibilities. He’ll be sadly missed.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said politely.

  ‘Well, I must go. I have my paper to finish.’ He began to walk away, then turned to look at her closely. ‘You’ll be there, of course. It’s a subject upon which you should have strong views.’

  ‘Mmm? Er …’ She hesitated. Clearly this was something she was supposed to know about; it would be far from politic to display complete ignorance. ‘You’ll have to remind me of where and when, I’m afraid, I tend to rely on my diary as an aide-mémoire, there’s so much going on.’ She looked up at him candidly, hoping her mendacity wasn’t too obvious.

  ‘Tomorrow evening in the Board Room.’ He said it a little reprovingly. ‘I sent a memo to all the medical staff. I really am very anxious we should be as well informed as possible.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, grateful for the memory that came back in a rush of an event she had dismissed from her mind as soon as she’d heard of it, having no intention of wasting an evening on a subject she knew inside out. ‘The AIDS debate. Um, I’m not sure. It depends on how the pressure of work is, and I am pretty well up-to-date on HIV, and –’

  ‘I want us to consider all the options on this one, doctor,’ he said heavily. ‘And will need your input. I hope indeed you can arrange your work so that you can get along. As you have no patient load …’ He left it hanging in the air and smiled vaguely. ‘Well, as I say, I must go back to my office. No peace for the wicked.’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Poor man. I imagine you’ll be contacting any relations, Inspector? Yes, I thought you would. Well, goodnight to you all. Sorry business, very sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow, doctor.’

  Well, that explains that, George thought as she reached for the kit which Bittacy, still panting with his exertions, had at last brought. Now let’s see if we can explain what happened to Mitchell Formby, or Formby Mitchell, whichever he was.

  She knelt by the body and started her examination as Gus and Sergeant Dudley watched her. The Soco, a little round man in a rather crumpled navy blue suit, was standing poised to get on with his job and he watched too, and she was very aware of the audience as she began gingerly to make her examination.

  The injuries were multiple and it would take a detailed PM to be sure of the cause of death, but it was clear from her initial observation that there had been more than one. His skull was severely fractured at the left temple, pushed in by some sort of hard pointed object, and had shattered into several pieces, some of which protruded from the wound. She looked beneath the body and there was a brick lying crookedly that could have inflicted it, though it seemed unsteady in its place; she would have thought the weight of a falling body would have dislodged it rather than driven it into the skull. But it could have happened …

  In addition there were injuries to the chest which had penetrated lung tissue – there was brightly scarlet frothy blood at the points of entry – and the belly too was clearly demonstrating damage, for it was distended and so taut that the skin felt hard to her touch. A lot of interior bleeding as well as exterior, she noted into her small dictaphone, keeping her voice low out of a sort of embarrassment due to the watchers surrounding her. In addition the left leg was shattered at the femur. It looked as though the bone had been sheared off completely, for the limb was sticking out at an ugly angle and the lower part was white under the torn cloth of the trousers. ‘Exsanguinated,’ she murmured into the dictaphone, ‘major blood vessels clearly lost.’

  ‘Can you give us a time of death, Dr B.?’ Gus asked and she shook her head.

  ‘Give me a chance, please! So far I’ve barely begun.’ But she took out of her kit the thermocouple to check temperature. She expected little joy; the night was so cold that the body was already chilled and she checked it again for rigor. Stiff and cold; normally that would mean death had occurred about eight hours ago. But on this bitterly cold night that could be grossly distorted.

  She checked the temperature in the nose, the ear and then, as an extra check, the axilla. To try to take a rectal reading here would be absurd even though she was sure there would be no objection from the police to having it done; no one could see this as a sex-linked crime with evidence that could be disturbed by such an action; but she remembered all too well how Oxford had died, and knew the careful examination of the rectum at the PM was a must. So, no rectal tem
perature now. The other readings would have to suffice.

  She took them all down in her notebook as well as dictating them into her machine and then sighed and looked up at Gus after finishing her calculations.

  ‘I’l’d be hard put to it to swear to this but you can have an estimate if you like.’

  ‘I’ll settle for that.’

  ‘OK. Between, oh, five and nine hours. Maybe a little less, maybe more. It’s so cold tonight that the readings may have been badly distorted, but I reckon you can narrow it to between those hours.’

  ‘Hmm. Not a lot of use, is it?’

  She bridled. ‘I told you, I can’t –’

  ‘I’m not complaining! Just making an observation. Now remind me, Roop. Give me the timetable again.’

  Sergeant Dudley stepped forward in the light to where he could be seen, nodded unsmilingly at George and flipped open his notebook. ‘Body was found at nine p.m. by Thomas James, one of the night staff who lives over in Tobruk Street at the back here. He was taking an illegal shortcut through this way. He was late for work and worried about it so he was very aware of the time. He had a torch with him and saw the body that way. Didn’t touch it, ran like hell to the A & E Head Porter’s office – he’s a night porter, is James, and has to report to him anyway. Head Porter, Bernard Bittacy, called us; call logged at nine-eleven. We got here at nine-seventeen. Took a long time to get over the rubble and suchlike. Professor Dieter turned up at nine-thirty, did the identification. At ten p.m. I talked to the staff of the supplies office on the phone – took till then for Professor Dieter to get the numbers for us. These people are being seen by D.C. Morley who’ll get statements from them, but in the meantime I can tell you that the person who saw him last was May Potter, secretary, who said he left the office at half past five, didn’t say where he was going. She went home a few minutes after him, locking up first.’ He snapped the notebook closed and looked at Gus. ‘That’s all so far. We couldn’t get on as fast as we’d have liked, since we were looking for Dr Barnabas.’ He didn’t glance at her and his voice was wooden. ‘The Soco’s been here for the past couple of hours or thereabouts’ – he looked at his watch – ‘it now being eleven-ten. That’s about it, Guv.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Gus said and stared unseeingly down at the body. ‘Well, if you’ve finished, doctor?’

  ‘I’ve finished here,’ she said and got to her feet, very aware of the way the tear in her tights had become a vast hole that exposed her entire left knee. ‘You can take him over as soon as you like.’

  ‘At least we don’t need transport,’ Gus said. ‘You – er – Bittacy, isn’t it? Yes. Can you get one of your agony wagons out there where the path is smooth? And a stretcher and a cover of some kind. Then we can shift this chap right over to the mortuary at once. Very considerate of him to die on the premises like this.’

  George opened her mouth to speak but then closed it, and moved away to the side to let the police get on, standing there with her hands in her pockets, once she’d dropped her plastic gloves back into her kit, watching them gloomily.

  I’ve painted myself into one hell of a corner, she thought. He has to be told about the man’s background and what I know, but I can’t tell him now or I’ll drop Michael in it. It’ll have to wait, but if it waits will they go off at a tangent and waste a lot of time that they don’t need to? It was a difficult situation and she couldn’t see how she was going to get out of it, and then had an idea and walked over to Gus Hathaway. ‘Are you planning to start the investigation tonight?’

  ‘We usually do,’ he said, turning away from one of the detective constables to whom he’d been talking. ‘Go on, Wheeler, you get on with it.’ He turned back to George. ‘There are things we can start straight away.’

  ‘It might be easier to wait till after my PM,’ she said. ‘I have to tell you the truth, I’m not at all happy about the estimation of time I had to give you. It’s damned difficult in these conditions and on a night as cold as this – you understand.’

  He looked at her long and hard and then sighed. ‘You’re taking back what you said, then?’

  ‘Not taking it back.’ She spoke cautiously, well aware of the fact that she wouldn’t be able to change her estimate, since there would be no new evidence to make that possible. ‘But I need time before confirming it as more definite. I really couldn’t stand by it at the moment, that’s the trouble. And if you start investigating along the lines of the timings I gave you, well …’

  ‘Hmm. I see what you mean.’ He thought for a moment and then quirked an eyebrow. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to get us to stop and go to bed because you’re too tired to work now, would you?’

  She flushed. ‘It makes no difference to me,’ she said tartly. ‘I won’t do the PM till tomorrow morning anyway. I need my technician and he won’t be available till then. I was just trying to save you a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Well.’ He seemed to make up his mind quickly. ‘Well, then, I’m grateful to you. We’ll see the body over to your mortuary, cover the site and go to bed like proper people to start again in the morning. At least I don’t have to set up an incident room – we’ve already got Oxford’s going.’

  She caught her breath. ‘Do you think there’s a need for that with this one? I mean, you think it wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of saying at this stage. I have to wait for your report, don’t I? But I have to think ahead to all possibilities, and I was just thinking, if it did happen to be a dicey one, and I did happen to need an incident room, at least I’d be able to double up a bit. Because if it should turn out not to be an accident it’d be logical to assume that the two were linked in some way, wouldn’t it? Me, I’ve had too much experience to deal in unlikely coincidences, like two killers at work on the one premises for separate reasons. That doesn’t happen very often.’

  ‘No,’ she said, and tightened her fists in her pockets. ‘No, it doesn’t.’ And what happened to Mitchell here tonight has to be linked with Oxford, she thought, it has to. Oh, I hope Michael’s friend phones early in the morning! The sooner I can give this man all the information I have the sooner I’ll feel right. Because at present I feel godawful.

  ‘We’re ready, Guv,’ someone called and Gus turned and went, and slowly the stretcher bearing the exceedingly battered remains of John Formby Mitchell – or Mitchell J. Formby – was carried away over the piles of bricks and breeze blocks by a couple of sweating men, followed by a huddle of policemen. George took a deep breath and followed the little cortège. It was the least she could do, she felt, to see the man on to her premises.

  ‘Dr B.!’ Gus called and she stopped and turned to look at him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder why we had a Soco here?’

  She lifted her brows. ‘You had one at Oxford’s place, and you were sure that was an accident.’

  He sighed. ‘It was an accident that the Soco happened to be at the station when the alarm went off. That was why he went to the Oxford flat with Roop. And it was burglary that was suspected there, of course, which makes a difference. This was an accident on a building site. We wouldn’t usually bring a Soco into that first go. Didn’t you think about that?’

  She stared at him silently.

  ‘I’d hardly ask for a scene-of-crime officer if I didn’t think there’d been a crime, would I? And I have to say it seems to me a bit much to have a fatal accident following a murder. That’s why I decided to take no chances. I just thought I’d mention it, because if you know anything that might be useful about this man, it’d be handy to hear it. Though I’m sure you’d tell me if you knew, wouldn’t you? You’re not the sort to hold back important evidence, are you?’

  22

  She slept fitfully and, waking early, was in the lab before eight. It seemed to make better sense than tossing and turning in her narrow hospital bed in the chill of her room in the residence. I’ll have to get myself a flat, she thought as she washed, shivering, and hurried in
to her clothes. I can’t go on like this. They’re too mean to heat this place properly and it’s the ugliest room I’ve ever slept in; and she closed the door behind her gratefully and went over to the lab in the thin early morning light.

  The hospital was already bustling and, as she hurried across the courtyard, trailing vapour clouds of breath behind her, she could smell the morning toast and coffee and the strong salty reek of frying bacon, together with the acrid tang of the disinfectant used to swab the floors and surfaces everywhere, and felt a sudden lift of her spirits. Life was complicated at present, what with murders on her doorstep and rather more men around to meddle with her feelings than there usually were, but life here at The Royal Eastern was never dull, and for that she was deeply grateful. She could cope with anything but boredom; and she unlocked the lab and let herself in, whistling softly between her teeth.

  There was a large manila envelope lying just inside, clearly having been pushed under the door. She seized it and, looking at the way her name was scrawled on the front, hurried into the main lab and switched on the kettle to make herself a cup of coffee, and then perched herself on a high workbench and tore open the envelope.

  It was, as she had hoped, from Sam.

  I’ve done some solid checking on your man [he wrote]. It was quite a fun piece of research to do, and it cheered me not a little. I thought the R. Oxfords of this world made far more money than I did, and certainly had a bigger following, but when I compared his PLR rates with mine I was greatly encouraged. PLR, by the way, is Public Lending Right. The reports they let you have from public libraries tell you just how many people have borrowed your books – it’s a measure of popularity, really. Last year, it turns out, Oxford didn’t make the top tranche – those authors who earn the maximum by getting something over half a million borrowings a year, and he’s got seventeen titles in print – but the one immediately below. Since I was only a couple of rungs behind him, with just one book to my name, I was very chuffed.