First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘If they’re good models, it’s not surprising, I suppose. Pretty women always do get snapped up.’

  He chuckled. ‘This one wasn’t all that pretty. More striking, really. You’ve seen her.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Carole Herne. She’s one of Felicity’s girls.’

  George gaped. ‘Matthew Herne’s wife? The senior admin guy? The one who’s an ex-major, or whatever?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘How unlikely – if you see what I mean. Though perhaps not. Soldiers and empty-headed females …’

  ‘You’re a mass of prejudices, aren’t you?’ he said admiringly. ‘Nearly as bad as me. I like that in a woman.’

  She flushed. ‘I’m just quoting previous experience. The sort of men who go in for learning how to kill people systematically, which is what career servicemen do, are also the sort who like women who look better than they taste, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I told you, I see someone like me, with lots of strong opinions. I approve of it. Listen I’ll settle this one way or the other for you. I’ll check our Mrs Oxford again and we’ll see what we can discover about your friend Bellamy. Er …’ he seemed casual suddenly. ‘Is it important to you that he should be what he says? Innocent and so forth; just a friend of hers?’

  She thought for a while and then nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it is.’

  ‘Then find out we must,’ he said lightly and looked at his watch. ‘Time’s swift chariot, bugger it. Have you any views on who might have done for Formby Mitchell?’

  She was bewildered by the sudden shift of mood. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve tried to work it out. I looked in the list for his initials only of course they’re not there. But I could try his against all the codes and see where I get. Mind, it’ll be difficult, not knowing which way round to use his names.’

  ‘Well, beaver away at it. I think it’s possible that he was helping someone else raise his blackmail money. Have you thought of that possibility?’

  She hadn’t and did so now. ‘An accomplice? But what would be in it for him? Unless you mean he was sharing the cash.’

  ‘He could have been responding to blackmail on his own account,’ Gus said. ‘Try that on for size. Here’s our man who’s got himself in here under false pretences in a top job, handling money. Someone’s found him out, the same sort of way you did, maybe, or by accident, it doesn’t matter. He’s being blackmailed himself and needs more money, but how to get it? Ah! He’ll use Formby Mitchell to get it for him. So he leans on him to do the necessary and so makes sure that if ever the crap hits the old doodah he’ll be pure as the driven. He knows Mitchell Formby won’t tell on him, because he scuppers himself if he does, and anyway if a man with a record like Formby’s gets caught who’s going to believe him if he tries to push it on to someone else? Either way our man is safe. How does that idea grab you?’

  She had listened with great concentration and now nodded slowly. ‘It’s an elegant scheme. It could be, so how do we find out if it’s all true?’

  He got to his feet. ‘That’s up to me. I’ll be digging around for the next few days to see what I can see. I’ve also got to look more into the matter of the money Oxford collected for the Barrie Ward Fund. There’s been some uneasiness over that, according to Dieter’s office. The secretary there was bumbling on about it. Could be just gossip, but I have to check all the same. My chaps are going to be busy for a few days. Ah well! No peace for the virtuous like me. Nor you. So, let me put an idea in your mind.’

  ‘Please do. I’ve used up all my own.’

  ‘Some of Felicity Oxford’s models do a bit of extra work on the side.’

  She frowned. ‘On the side? Freelance, you mean? Well, I suppose – Oh!’ She stared at him. ‘Do you mean they were prostitutes?’

  ‘I do. Not all, but a few. It’s not that unusual, of course.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He laughed. ‘What a question to ask a copper! We found out! That’s what we do best, ducky, find things out. Take it from me, some of her girls are on the game. High class, but all the same, they’re brasses.’

  ‘Do you mean that Felicity … No. She’s not interested in sex.’

  ‘I don’t see that would disqualify her. Lots of the girls aren’t but they still sell it. But I didn’t mean Felicity herself. Think about it, Dr B. I’ll be in touch again soon. Meanwhile, have a go at that code. I’ll look forward to seeing what you can do with it. Good hunting!’

  And he scooped up his bag of bits and pieces and his coat, tipped his invisible hat, and was gone.

  26

  The only place she could think of to work on the code was the library in the old medical school. It had been some time since Old East had had its own medical students; nowadays it was attached to one of the major City hospitals and students just came for experience in particular specialities, but the library was still there, and it was a pleasant enough place to work, with its crowded bookshelves and big central tables. It was, above all, warm; the thick layers of books that covered every available space trapped warm air inside the room, giving it a comfortable frowsty air.

  But finding the place to work, she decided, wasn’t quite enough. She needed more information about the people employed at Old East before she could check whether their initials appeared in code. A good many were known to her by name as well as by sight now, after having worked in the place for almost three months, but she didn’t know them all by any means. So she stopped in the Dean’s office on her way to the library that evening after a scrappy supper in the canteen. The Professor’s secretary had a reputation for working as late as she possibly could every evening (rumour had it that she charged the hospital overtime for every extra minute she put in, and was saving up to buy a country cottage) and she certainly seemed the person most likely to be able to help her.

  She was indeed at her desk, her head down over a pile of envelopes she was carefully writing by hand, and she didn’t look up when George came in and stood on the other side of her desk.

  ‘Good evening, Phyllis,’ she said at last.

  The woman looked up unwillingly. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked frostily.

  George bit back the desire to snap back that with a facial expression as disagreeable as hers it was very unlikely, and instead smiled winsomely. ‘I’m feeling so guilty,’ she said. ‘Professor Dieter and his wife included me in their supper party the other night, after the lecture, and I haven’t thanked them. I couldn’t write directly to Mrs Dieter – I don’t have the address in full – so I thought I’d drop by and see if the Professor was here to be thanked.’

  Phyllis looked a shade less forbidding at this display of belated good manners. ‘He’s not here at present,’ she said guardedly. ‘You should have come during the day.’

  ‘Alas, much too busy,’ George said with well-simulated regret. ‘We’re quite overrun down in Pathology. You’ll understand if anyone will …’

  ‘Well, yes, no doubt.’ The woman twisted her face into the semblance of a smile. ‘Well, I’ll tell him.’ And she put her head down again to continue with her envelopes.

  ‘Thank you so much. Oh, by the bye.’ George said it as casually as she could. ‘I’d be so grateful, since I’m here, if you could give me another little bit of assistance. I was at a medical meeting the other day and someone there asked me to deliver a message – a verbal one you understand – to one of the staff here, and I said I would. He said it was important. The trouble is, I simply can’t remember the name of the person I was to deliver it to! Isn’t that ridiculous?’

  ‘Yes,’ Phyllis said and looked up again with barely concealed impatience. ‘I always write such things down.’

  ‘I should have done, I know that, but you know how it is – busy meetings. The thing is, I thought you’d have a sort of hospital staff directory? One that lists all the names of the staff here? I could go through it. I’m sure I’ll remember the name when I see it.’

  ‘Was
it someone medical?’

  ‘I – Well, I’m not sure,’ George said carefully. ‘It might have been. Possibly one of the senior admin people, though.’

  ‘Well, if it was one of the juniors or the domestic staff of course I’d have no knowledge of them.’ Phyllis looked pleased with herself on this score. ‘I deal only with the senior people in all the departments here. I have my own office list, of course, of their extension phone numbers. That’s all there is.’

  ‘Could I look through that?’ George said eagerly. ‘I’m sure I’d find it there.’

  ‘You can’t take it away.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I’ll sit here then, and –’

  Phyllis changed her mind. ‘You can take it for an hour or two, I suppose. As long as you bring it back at once. I’ll be here till about ten, I imagine.’ She sighed heavily. ‘There is a great deal to be done in this office.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ George said and smiled winningly. ‘Then I’ll bring it back in a couple of hours, or even less. Thank you so much.’ She held out her hand.

  The woman hesitated and then reached into her drawer and pulled out a medium-sized stiff covered ledger and handed it over. ‘Don’t make any marks on it,’ she said. ‘It’s often used by the Professor and it has to be kept just so.’

  ‘Of course,’ George said and escaped, her prize clutched to her, triumphant at her own success as a detective. To have asked for the book outright, she told herself, would never have got it into her hands. Gus’d be impressed. He only has to ask and they have to give him what he wants, because he’s a policeman. Me, I have to cajole them. And didn’t I do it well?

  She was less pleased with herself an hour later, when she had gone through the list of names with patient thoroughness and found nothing that was of any use after all. How could there have been, she asked herself crossly, when all it is is a list of names that mean little or nothing to me? And why did I ever think I’d be able to sort it out this way? She stretched her aching back and looked for the umpteenth time at her list of initials taken from Oxford’s computer disc. Not that she expected it to tell her anything – and then suddenly her back stiffened as her eyes lingered on the third on the list. K.K. £1,000. A double. She reached for Phyllis’s telephone list again and began to riffle through it quickly.

  There were seven names which had matching initials. None were K.K., but there were two in the Ds, David Denton, an anaesthetist, and Donald Dench, who was the deputy head of the physiotherapy department; two Ws, Walter Weinstock whom she knew as a medical registrar, and William Warden who was the hospital Chaplain. Then there was Frances Furlong, the Catering Supervisor, and Jo Jennson, who was the senior in the accounts department.

  It might be nonsense, she thought as she scribbled as fast as she could, but equally it could be a beginning – and then she almost jumped out of her skin as a hand was put on her shoulder.

  ‘Working very late, Dr Barnabas!’ Professor Dieter was looking down at her with undisguised curiosity. ‘Or is it still that list of names you’re looking at? Phyllis told me you had a message for someone whose name you’d forgotten.’

  ‘Uh – yes.’ George blinked up at him, not sure what to do. Tell him the truth even though she’d been at pains to hide it from his secretary? But that wouldn’t be wise; after all, everyone at Old East could be regarded as a suspect, even the Professor himself. And unbidden a memory rose in her mind like a bubble; Professor Dieter at the Barrie Ward building site the night they’d found Mitchell Formby’s body. Could be have pushed the man to his death? And then instead of vanishing hung around the place, as a sort of double bluff? Silly bubble, she thought then, and let it burst. It couldn’t have been Dieter; he’d do nothing so – well – crude, as to push a man to his death. He’d be far more subtle, surely? But absurd an idea or not, she had to take the possibility into account; and there was another, too. What would Gus say of her detective abilities if all she did was blurt out the fact that she was helping him by attempting to break a code that might find the murderer of Richard Oxford? Better to continue lying.

  ‘I – er – yes, I was asked at the Royal College meeting last week if I’d deliver a message to someone here and for the life of me I can’t remember the name. So I thought maybe if I saw it it would come back to me.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the unconscious memory, hmm? Have you had any success?’ He bent closer to look at her lists and it was too late to put her hand over them.

  ‘I’ve managed to remember that it was an alliterative name,’ she said, improvising hard. ‘So I noted all those and I thought I’d wander round to them all and ask them if the message made sense.’

  ‘You’re very punctilious for what was after all just a minor encounter, I imagine.’

  ‘Well, I promised, you know, and one does like to keep one’s word.’

  ‘One is impressed,’ the Professor said drily. ‘May I have my list of phone numbers back now, please? I have some calls to make.’

  She handed it over at once. ‘Of course. I’ll go and see these people I’ve picked out and deliver the message. I can’t do more. If I’ve got the name wrong after all, well, there it is.’

  ‘Let me see if I can help.’ He leaned over again and she had to let him look. ‘Hmm. Well, I can tell you that Mr Denton left us a few months ago. Gone off to Bart’s. Mr Dench is still here, though I can’t imagine what anyone at a pathology meeting might need delivered to him. What was the message, by the way?’ He looked at her with his eyebrows up and she smiled at him in the most relaxed way she could.

  ‘Oh, rather odd.’ She managed a light laugh. ‘He just said to say that the books were ready and, since they were wanted, to call for them and there was a good surprise in them. It’s mysterious.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Professor said and bent his head again. ‘It just occurred to me you might have been told whether the person was a man or a woman. You have here both sexes, which seems a bit odd.’

  ‘Oh,’ George said, and her mind seemed to blank as she looked down at her lists again and then almost before she knew she was saying it, had her answer. ‘The trouble is those women’s names there – Frances and Jo – they could be men, couldn’t they? He, er, Dr Ambrose, didn’t write it down, you see. Just said it. So it could have been anything really. I just made a note of all the alliterative names. Oh well, I dare say it’s a waste of time anyway. Oh, Professor, by the bye, I did want to thank you for including me in your party the other evening. It was most kind of you and your wife. I’ve been very wrong not to have thanked you sooner.’

  ‘It was our pleasure.’ He straightened up and tucked the book of phone numbers under his arm. ‘Our pleasure indeed. Well, goodnight, Dr Barnabas. I have work to do, I’m afraid.’ And he nodded at her and went, leaving her sweating and immensely relieved behind him.

  But even after all that, she was no further forward with breaking the code a couple of hours later. She tried all sorts of combinations of letters to see if she could make them match the sums of money alongside them but nothing seemed to make any sense at all. It had to be as Gus had said; a code of such staggering simplicity that it couldn’t be broken except by accident, possibly based on some quirk of Oxford’s that made the key inaccessible. And she put the printout sheets back in their plastic envelope and stretched her back wearily.

  I must be crazy, she thought. I don’t have to put myself through all this for what is, after all, none of my affair. It’s Gus’s job to solve this crime, not mine.

  But she knew she’d go on meddling, probing, trying to find an answer. It was almost impossible for her ever to leave even a minor confusion alone. The drive to untangle, to identify, just to know the true facts was far too strong in her. It had driven her all through her school and college years; had chosen her career for her, for what was a pathologist but an untangler of mysteries? To be faced with this mystery, involving two deaths and a code and blackmail and theft and not to try to resolve it would be to go against all her deepest instincts. And now, tired
as she was, and hard as she’d tried, the mystery remained as inpenetrable as it had been when she’d started this evening. That irritated her. She couldn’t just go to bed and leave it; there had to be more she could do that would be useful. After a moment’s thought she pulled her scribbling pad towards her and wrote at the top of a clean sheet: SUSPECTS.

  And then stopped to think. In order of likelihood? How could she know that? Better just to write them down as they came to mind and see where she went from there.

  A pattern established itself quickly. First she wrote NAME in large capitals: Felicity Oxford. MOTIVE followed, again in large capitals. Wife of the victim who was bisexual and who gave her a virus that will ultimately kill her. That must have made her hate Oxford.

  But hate him enough to murder him? George stopped and thought hard for a while longer and then added Money. Surely Felicity stood to inherit what had to be a considerable fortune? Or – and here she stopped and stared into space. Would the law step in and prevent Felicity from taking money that had been ill-gotten? Could a blackmailer’s money be left to his family or was it impounded by the State? She had no idea, and she made a star at the side of the entry to remind her to check up with Gus. And maybe something else needed checking. Could Felicity have known her husband was a blackmailer?

  She stopped and thought some more and then had to add, unwillingly, a new heading: COUNTER-MOTIVE. If Felicity Oxford knew he was a blackmailer and shared his profits it was of benefit to her to keep him alive, not kill him. That, George decided was a depressing thought and moved on quickly.

  OPPORTUNITY. That had to be the next one, obviously. Beneath that she wrote Masses. Who better to go into the dead man’s flat and plant a tube of poisoned haemorrhoid cream? No one would give her a second glance. After all, she was the man’s wife, even if they didn’t live together. But there was a second set of factors to be taken into account under this heading: the possibility of getting hold of digitalis and filling a tube with it in the pharmacy. Here George had to write Moderate. Although Felicity spent less time hanging around Old East than her husband had, she was still here often enough for committee meetings and the like. She could have managed it.