First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  However, it’s sales that matter and here he does rather better, oddly enough. He has very big overseas sales and has sold a few film rights. I found a very helpful girl at his publishers, as you can see from the attached figures, and it was she who gave me all this as well as his PLR computer printout for last year. Highly improper, but she’s a friend. I’d say his annual income from his books was around sixty thousand. A nice living by anyone’s measure but by no means in the Barbara Taylor Bradford or Ken Follett bracket. They really make millions. I suppose he earned a fair bit from lecturing and a bit more from radio and TV as most authors do these days, but even that wouldn’t bump him into the six figures a year group.

  So there it is. He earned well enough but it wasn’t great. He certainly didn’t seem to make enough to support the lifestyle you described. By the way, he isn’t even a company as so many authors are. He is – or was – still a private citizen and according to my little friend at his publishers paid all his income tax – he complained to her enough about what they took which is how she knows – and as he was a man on his own, with no children, it’s my guess he paid at the top rate, too.

  I hope this is of help in your amateur sleuthing (that’s Hattie’s description, not mine, so don’t think I’m patronizing you!) and if there’s anything else with which I can help then do let me know.

  Yours,

  Sam Chanter,

  She folded the paper slowly and put it back in the envelope. So she’d been right. Oxford’s money was a key issue. It had to be obvious that he’d got it from some other source, and it was reasonable to assume that the reason for his murder was to be found in the investigation of that source. Which was something she couldn’t do for herself. Only Gus and his men could do that and she felt a stab of irritation. It would have been so much fun to find out the why of this murder on her own. She knew the how, and that was surprising enough. Now she almost knew the why, but only almost. It was tantalizing to be so close and yet not be able to get nearer on her own. Unless she could get at Oxford’s private affairs and see for herself what sort of accounts he kept, she was balked.

  She took her coffee into her office and set to work sorting out her kit and cleaning it ready for the morning to come, thinking hard all the time, but she had to admit she’d gone as far as she could. Gus Hathaway had to be given all the information she had, and allowed to do his job properly. And she scolded herself as she worked, well aware that she had overstepped professional boundaries in behaving as she had; she should have told him at once about Mitchell Formby. If it hadn’t been for young Michael Urquhart she’d call him right now and get it all off her conscience.

  But of course she didn’t and, with her appetite sharpened by the coffee, decided to take herself over to the canteen for a quick breakfast before starting the PM. Danny would be ready for her by nine with a little luck. She left a note for him in the mortuary and then hurried over to the main hospital block.

  She was sitting at a corner table dealing with a bowl of muesli and some toast and marmalade when Toby came and sat beside her.

  ‘And what happened to you last night?’

  ‘What? Oh. I was working.’

  ‘I told you I’d call for you and we’d have supper.’

  ‘The fact that you said it doesn’t mean I agreed,’ she said tartly. ‘Anyway, it was just as well I didn’t. I had to –’

  ‘You’re changing the subject.’ He sounded suddenly serious, not at all his usual bantering self. She glanced at him and put down her spoon. Her hand was a little unsteady, so she had to. ‘Are you trying to tell me I’m making a nuisance of myself? I didn’t get the impression you were actually, shall we say, repelled by me. Yet when I try to take us a bit further along the road to wherever we might get to at the other end, you become untouchable. I didn’t see you as the sort of woman who played hard to get, but if I’m wrong and you’re a tease at heart, say so, and I’ll play along as best I can. Not that I’ll enjoy it, because I think that’s not only daft, but positively Neanderthal behaviour. But I’ll do it if I must. But if I’m really up shit creek and you can’t stand the sight of me –’

  ‘Ouch,’ she said. She picked up her spoon again but couldn’t eat. She just sat and stirred her muesli.

  ‘Well, what is it?’

  She swallowed. It really was very hard to be rational in this man’s company. ‘I thought you were playing games with me.’

  ‘Playing – Well, of course I am, you daft object! The best game there is. A little slap-and-tickle, or come-and-be-kissed or whatever else you want to call it. What is it with you, lady?’

  ‘According to Gus Hathaway you’re a suspect for Oxford’s murder.’ She hadn’t meant to put it quite so baldly but now it was out and in a way it was a relief. She looked at him, and he sat and gazed back at her, his face quite blank.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you asked me.’ She allowed herself to sound irritable. ‘I didn’t want to tell you but if you keep on pursuing me –’

  ‘Faintly pursuing,’ he said and laughed, but it was a tight little sound with little of pleasure in it.

  ‘I don’t know what to do. I thought I knew who it might be, but now he’s dead and so –’

  ‘What?’ He actually gaped now. ‘Hold your horses, will you? You’re losing me here.’

  She sighed. ‘I imagined the whole place’d be humming with it by now. Mitchell Formby – deputy to Matthew Herne, the admin chap – he was found on the Barrie Ward building site. Last night.’

  ‘Dead, you say?’

  ‘Severe multiple injuries. Stoved in skull, belly like a drum, lungs perforated. Nasty.’

  ‘Then very dead.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And you thought he was the one who’d murdered Oxford? Don’t tell me why. I don’t think I could handle it. But anyway, that police bloke thinks it was me! For God’s sake, why?’

  ‘Because of Felicity Oxford,’ she said. She was still looking at him, never breaking the eye contact. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she managed it. ‘He says that in every murder investigation you have to start with the nearest and dearest. And even though they don’t live together, that’s her. And you’re … The term he used was close. Very close, he said. And you are, aren’t you? And I do know – I have heard, dammit, you’ve got a reputation as a – a fickle type. Playing around –’

  ‘And that’s why you didn’t come back to the residence last night to meet me?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I had a meeting with – with someone who was getting information for me.’

  ‘Oh. About me?’

  ‘No.’ She had reddened sharply at the sardonic note in his voice. ‘Of course not. About Mitchell Formby, if you must know. I thought – Oh, damn, there’s so much you don’t know and if you’re a suspect – and you are – I’m not sure I should be telling you all this anyway. I should keep you in the dark so that if Gus Hathaway does find out facts that prove he’s right, at least you won’t be forewarned …’ Her voice trailed away and to her horror she felt her eyes filling. ‘Did you have anything to do with it, Toby?’

  He reached out one hand and held on to hers. She felt it warm against her very cold skin. ‘Would you believe me if I said absolutely not?’

  She took a deep breath and willed the tears back under her lids. Somehow she managed it. ‘I’d like to.’

  He let go and nodded. ‘I see. You’d like to but you can’t. Well, would it be pushing my luck too hard to ask if he has any evidence to support his belief?’

  ‘He hasn’t told me of any –’ She stopped then and added impulsively, ‘But I – I wondered about something …’

  ‘Spit it out,’ he said as she hesitated.

  ‘You seemed to have a very, well, detailed knowledge of the interior of the Oxford flat. Talked about it as a palace and how the bathroom was so … How did you know?’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Oh.’ She didn’t know what m
ore to say.

  ‘I was a guest there,’ he said shortly. ‘I had dinner with several other people, if that’s significant, and Oxford showed us round. He was very proud of the place. Did everything but put on a peaked cap and ask for tips at the end.’ He got to his feet. ‘But never mind, George. I won’t make a pest of myself by asking any more questions or making any more declarations of innocence. You’ll clearly need more than that. You don’t seem able to take someone on your own estimation. You prefer to listen to others’ opinions. And gossip.’ There was a cold edge in his voice as he said the word. ‘Well, that’s up to you. If they take me off the suspect list, do let me know.’ And he pushed back his chair with a savage little gesture and went, and she sat there and watched him go, more miserable than she’d been for some time.

  The phone rang just as she got back to her office. She nearly let it ring unanswered, wanting to get down to the mortuary and busy herself in work. The more detailed the work she had to do, she reckoned, the less likely she would be to think of the way Toby had looked at her, with a face that showed genuine hurt. She felt dreadful about him, quite dreadful.

  ‘Well?’ she snapped.

  ‘Er, Dr Barnabas? My name’s Pritchard.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Peter Pritchard.’

  ‘Oh!’ At once she was all attention. ‘I’m so sorry. You caught me at a bad moment. You’re, um, Michael’s friend?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He’s explained to you what it is I wanted to talk to you about?’

  The voice laughed in a resigned sort of way. ‘He has. There never was a geezer like him for getting what he wants, and now he wants me to help you. Well, that’s fair enough. I don’t see any reason why not.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to tell Gus Hathaway – Detective Chief Inspector Hathaway – that I got the information you discovered about the Mitchell man – or the Formby man, whichever he is – from you, and that I asked you because I knew you. Will this cause you any problems?’

  ‘Oh, there might be, if he complains to my Guv’nor about me using police time for a non-authorized person.’

  ‘Oh, hell! Then I can’t –’

  ‘No, it’ll be all right, doctor. There’s no one else here can touch me on this computer. They all need me to do their bits for ’em, so they won’t fuss too much. Anyway, it turned out it was police business, didn’t it? It’s going to help you nobble a thief, as I understand it.’

  ‘He’s already nobbled,’ George said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Accident. Or maybe not. Anyway he was found late last night in a heap on a pile of rubble on a building site here. And that stops him being a suspect for the Oxford murder, which is what I had him in my sights for. So there it is. Still, it’s important information because if the death wasn’t an accident … Well, either way, it has to be linked with the thefts in some way, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’d imagine so. Look, don’t you worry. You tell ’em I did this for you and there’s an end of it. We’re old friends, so –’

  ‘How?’

  ‘What? Oh, how old friends? Well, say I was a patient of yours once?’

  She laughed. ‘Hardly! I’m a pathologist, remember.’

  ‘Whoops! Sorry. Well, of a friend of yours then?’

  ‘Yes. Ye-es.’ Her lips curved. ‘Say you were a patient of Dr Ian Felgate of Inverness. Saw him when you were on holiday, with a bellyache. OK?’

  ‘Ian Felgate. Got it. Good hunting, doctor.’

  ‘I hope so. I’m about to do the PM on Mitchell Formby – or vice versa – now. I dare say Michael’ll fill you in with the news when there is some.’

  ‘I’ll see to it he does. Goodbye, doctor. I’ll be thinking of you.’

  She came back to her office four hours later, her back aching with the tension that had filled her all through the post-mortem and her head aching a little. It hadn’t been an easy one and having Rupert Dudley standing there in his most morose style, watching her like a lynx, hadn’t helped.

  Gus Hathaway was waiting for her, sitting in her chair with his feet up on her desk.

  She scowled at him. ‘There’s a chair for visitors over there.’

  ‘And I thought you were better than us stupid anally retentive men!’ he said and got to his feet. ‘But you’re as bad as I am, thoroughly territorial. OK, I’ll sit here. Nasty one, was it?’

  ‘You saw the body,’ she said shortly. ‘Not exactly a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.’

  ‘I’ll grant you. You smell nice.’

  She was disconcerted and just blinked at him.

  ‘Joy, isn’t it? Expensive stuff! You do yourselves well, you pathologists.’

  She flushed. ‘So would you if you had to deal with a job as malodorous as mine. I like to make sure I come out of my shower smelling like a live person rather than a corpse.’

  ‘You’re very much a person,’ he said approvingly. ‘Now, tell me about the corpse. I’ll hold me nose if it gets too much. What did you find?’

  She sat down heavily as Sheila came in with a tray of coffee and dimpled at Gus as she set it down and busied herself pouring it out. ‘We can manage, thanks, Sheila,’ she said at last. ‘The Inspector’s got a lot to talk about.’ Sheila flushed and went away and Gus laughed.

  ‘If she put any more bunting out she’d keel over,’ he said. ‘I do prefer a woman to be a bunch of thistles rather than a posy of pinks. And she’s no end of a poser’

  She laughed in spite of herself. ‘Don’t be rude about my staff. Now listen, you want to know my findings.’

  ‘Accident? Did he fall or was he –’

  ‘I can’t say. I doubt anyone could.’

  ‘Hmm, I expected as much. We looked at the upper parts of the structure this morning. No slip marks, nothing untoward. There’s been the world and his mate up there, and so much muck and cement dust and rubbish and mud on the wooden slats he could easily have slipped. Question is, what was he doing up there in the first place, when all the workmen had gone?’

  ‘He signed the bills, it seems. He was the one who inspected work and agreed it was passable, so it’s reasonable he should, I suppose. I gather he spent a good deal of his time there’

  ‘Yes. So, no post-mortem evidence of what might have happened.’

  ‘A few splinters in his hands, but even those could have got there by normal means. I looked at the angles and the depth. There was nothing to suggest any violence was involved in getting them. They were in different directions, all the hallmarks of accidental splinter collection from handling raw wood. And there’s enough of that about that site, I imagine.’

  ‘You’d be right. Hmm. I suppose it’s the tough hard labour bit now of plotting everyone who was there that afternoon and evening and everyone who saw Formby and everyone who didn’t, to see if we can find out if there was anyone who might have pushed him. And then of course we have to find out why anyone would have wanted to in the first place’

  ‘Ah,’ George said and looked down at her hands.

  ‘Now what?’ He sounded resigned. ‘When you say, “Ah,” like that I’m learning to be wary.’

  ‘Just as well.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’ve got some evidence for you.’ Then she couldn’t help it. She smiled, broadly, hugely pleased with herself. ‘There might be very good reasons why he was pushed even if there’s no postmortem evidence.’ And she took a deep breath and explained it all, from the first fuss over the microscopes to her carefully edited account of how she got the information about the man’s past from the police computer database. He listened in total silence, only watching her face all the time she talked.

  ‘Well,’ he said when she had finished. ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’ she demanded.

  ‘What do you want me to say? That I’m gobsmacked? OK, I’m gobsmacked. Furthermore, I’m as sick as a parrot, over the moon and –’

  ‘That’ll do. As long as you’re pleased. This should be use
ful.’

  ‘Oh, I love it! Useful? How’s that for meiosis?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Meiosis. The verbal technique by which it is conveyed that a thing is of lesser importance or size than it really is. It’s bloody enormously useful!’

  ‘And I get a lecture in English grammar as a reward for it from a man who claims to be a none-of-your-nonsense cockney? I am indeed the recipient of no meagre recompense. That’s litotes, by the way, a grammatical technique for aggrandizing something by using a negative as an affirmative.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’ve got that quite right,’ he said judiciously. ‘But we’ll call the honours even. Have you the evidence to prove all this?’

  She nodded, pulled out her desk drawer and gave him the copy of the printout from the police computer, and then after a moment also took out the letter she’d received from Sam. But she didn’t give it to him at once.

  ‘I went a bit further,’ she said. ‘When I saw Oxford’s flat it seemed to me that he spent a lot of money there – so much I wondered where it all came from. And I, er, I asked a friend to check up on a few facts.’

  She held out Sam’s letter and he glanced at it and then up at her face. ‘Let me guess. You’ve found out that he didn’t earn enough professionally to live in the style he seemed to do. That he paid full taxes on his literary earnings and had no overseas stash anywhere. Hmm? And that suggests to you he had another and probably illicit source of income.’

  She stared at him nonplussed and then slowly put the envelope down on her desk. ‘Well, yes.’

  He smiled cheerfully. ‘What do you think I’ve been doin’ all this time, Dr B.? Scratching my ar – bottom? We’ve been busy, we have, me and my busies.’ He grinned. ‘We’ve found out much the same as you have. And a bit more besides.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers of his own. ‘You might like to cop a look at all that.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A printout. The software that Oxford had for his computer was varied and considerable. We went through it all – like I told you, ours is a plodding sort of job. We get our heads down and just beaver away. This disc is the most significant one. Look at it when you’ve got time. It’ll show you just where Oxford got his dosh. Not exactly who from – that’s encoded material, I’m afraid, but then it would be – but how he did it. Enjoy yourself.’