by Janet Neel
‘Where did he get the cash?’
‘I have no idea. I never give him any. Well … it would go on drugs. I pay anything I have to for him direct.’
She knew this to be true and realised that she was only stalling while she thought. ‘It’s a good hospital, Mary’s,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He sat heavily on the edge of the desk. ‘I can’t cope with all this, Annabelle. I just want to be a doctor and look after patients.’
Who are properly grateful, not related to you and not on drugs, she supplied, silently. ‘Well, you can’t do anything for Francis until he comes out of a coma,’ she pointed out patiently.
‘And the police are probing me about Friday night.’ He looked at her sideways, lips compressed, a quick testing glance.
She decided she did not quite dare to remind him that it was hardly her fault that he was without an alibi. ‘Great Ormond Street have offered to interview me,’ she said, instead.
‘Why? What for?’
‘I did tell you that I had decided to try and get back into paediatrics. This being a GP – isn’t what I wanted to do.’
‘Oh Christ. Can’t you think of anyone but yourself?’
It was a cry of pure rage and she gaped at him, utterly taken aback. He had turned scarlet and was trembling, and she was the other side of the desk before she had consciously thought, so sure was she that he was going to hit her. His mouth squared like a child starting to cry and he banged the desk with the edge of his hand. It was a frightening study in frustrated rage, and she edged another step away and put her hand on the comforting weight of a silver ink-well, gift of a grateful patient.
‘You’d better go,’ she said, trying to steady her voice.
‘No, wait.’ He was struggling with himself and she watched, horrified. ‘I cannot believe that you’re not doing it deliberately. Winding me up.’ His voice broke, and she could feel the power of his wanting to hit her, or break something. She understood in one liberating flash that all this had not very much to do with her, she was just there, a necessary focus for this uncontrollable anger. She waited, quietly, the heavy ink-well in her hand, because she understood that if he came after her she would have to knock him out or deflect him long enough to get out of the door, because he had no control. She watched him fighting with himself, fighting against the spurts of pure uncontrollable rage and misery. It was like watching a two-year-old coming out of a tantrum only this was a grown man with the strength to batter those around him as a toddler could not.
‘This must be how you felt about your father,’ she said, when she was sure he had himself in hand.
‘Yes. I wanted to kill him and I couldn’t, I couldn’t. When I saw him hanging there I wanted to pick up the chair and batter him.’
She must have made a noise or moved, because suddenly he was staring at her across the desk with dark blue eyes. ‘He was dead, anyone could see that. So there wasn’t anything I could do.’
‘Why were you there?’ She was almost too frightened to speak, but instinct told her to keep a conversation going.
‘To look for the file on the trust. My mother’s trust. And see what I could find. I knew he’d stolen the money and we needed it – Francis and me. I couldn’t find anything, so I went away.’
‘Why didn’t you call the police?’
‘I didn’t want to. I wanted to leave him hanging there. I knew he was dead, but I didn’t want him cut down. And I thought they’d think I’d done it.’ He looked at her, limp suddenly. ‘They will think I did it.’
She walked round the desk, her legs still shaking but in control, and put her arms round him and he clutched at her convulsively. ‘I didn’t. He was dead. It was Saturday morning. I thought he was away with Sylvia, you see, so I went round. I got a key cut.’ He sounded six years old and scared, and she held him stiffly, wanting to comfort but passionately not wanting the terrified little boy.
‘We’d better go to the police. The one you’ve already talked to – Francesca’s husband.’
‘Will you come with me?’
‘Of course,’ she said, regretting helplessly the new life she was beginning to find for herself. ‘Of course, darling. We’ll go first thing tomorrow morning.’
9
Friday, 15 April
‘No, I haven’t done much about Francis Price. He was still unconscious yesterday, but I did make sure Notting Dale knew I had an interest. And the hospital.’
John McLeish had just come out of the morning meeting of the team on the Price case, and was aware he was sounding cross. He had seen his wife very little for the past week, and it was hardly Francesca’s fault that the Price case was not following the usual pattern in most murder cases, in which the likely murderer emerged quickly from the surroundings. ‘I’m due to see his brother again,’ he offered, in partial explanation.
‘I didn’t mean to nag,’ Francesca said, coldly. She was at her desk in Gladstone College; he could hear the clock-tower strike in the background. ‘I just wanted to be quite sure Bruce had passed on the message. I forgot last night, due to your getting back so late.’
There must, he reflected, be some wives who would let their policeman husbands work the hours a difficult case needed without a continual barrage of objection.
‘Notting Dale aren’t going to charge him. Well, they can’t, for a start nothing on him and nothing at the place he lives. And it’s not him they’re after anyway, it’s the supplier.’
‘And he was still unconscious. That must have made it a bit more difficult.’
‘It did. And I haven’t got very far with your Mr Sutherland either. I’ll have a word with the DS there later. See you tonight.’
‘That would make a nice change.’
Matthew Sutherland strode confidently up to the nurses’ room in the Minto ward of St Mary’s and greeted the uniformed rear view of a young woman, scrabbling through papers.
‘Excuse me. My cousin Francis Price is here somewhere and my aunt, who is abroad, has asked me to come and see him.’
‘You can’t.’
‘He’s still unconscious? Could I possibly just look at him so I can tell my aunt?’
The nurse turned round, revealing herself as very young and very cross, and he gave her his most winning smile.
‘You can’t see him. He’s too weak for visitors.’
‘You mean he’s come round?’
She took him in this time, slowly recognising a personable young man not much older than herself. ‘Yes, he has actually. Not long ago, but he’s very weak. He’s on the ward because they needed the bed in Intensive Care. You’re his cousin, you said?’ She looked doubtfully at the dark red hair, and bent to look at a schedule.
‘It was me called the ambulance when he collapsed. Please. I won’t fuss him. And my aunt would be so relieved.’ He cast a mental apology in the direction of his father’s only sister in faraway Rarituka, New Zealand.
The girl was still hesitant, but he smiled at her patiently, so she came round the counter and led him down the corridor, her heavy black shoes thumping on the hard floor. She threw open the door. Francis Price was lying on the bed, his head slightly raised and a drip running into his outstretched left arm. He was deathly pale and still, but back in the world, his eyes opening momentarily at their arrival. The nurse checked the drip and looked carefully at her patient and reflectively at Matthew.
‘It’s all right,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll just stay five minutes, if I may.’
She nodded and left, and he hitched his chair close up to the bed.
‘Francis,’ he said, ‘you don’t know me, but when you fell over unconscious in the pub night before last I called the ambulance.’
The eyes stayed closed but there was something in the face to show the man was listening.
‘I realised you’d overdosed. Smack, was it?’
The eyes flickered open and closed again, firmly.
‘I’m not a policeman. I’m a lawyer. And you’re in dead shtuck, m
ate. Who gave it to you?’
A faint twist of the mouth and Matthew strained to hear.
‘M’man.’
‘Wrong question. Who gave you the cash?’
‘Fuck off.’
Matthew sat back, acknowledging a reasonable rebuke and decided to start again. ‘I’m not sure how much you’re hearing, Francis, but I know you’re one of the people suspected of killing your father, and I know that because we – my firm – represent your stepmother.’
‘Sylvia?’
‘Yes.’ Matthew considered the pale eyelids. ‘So you don’t want to open your eyes. Fair enough, I only need you to hear. You had a load the day before yesterday when I saw you take a dive off a bar stool. I know what smack costs. What I’ve been wondering was whether someone among the group found it convenient to have you overdose. That way it could be you who killed your father.’
The man on the bed remained silent, but the rhythm of his breathing had changed, and Matthew knew he was hearing the words. ‘So I asked myself who gave you the cash? Was it your brother?’
Francis Price started to cough, painfully and Matthew reached to prop him up in bed, cautiously working round the drip.
‘Who, Francis?’ He watched, frustrated, as the man performed the difficult trick of coughing up his lungs with his eyes closed. He heard footsteps in the corridor. ‘Listen, mate, I’m on your side. I’ve done smack in my time. Think about it. If you didn’t kill your father someone else did. And it’s a bit easy to pin it on a naughty druggie like you.’
Francis had managed to stop coughing but he wasn’t going to speak.
‘I’ll have to go, but I’ll be back. I’ve told them I’m your cousin, OK? I’ve left my card in the drawer here. Call me and I’ll come running. And don’t take any presents from anyone.’ He straightened up as the door opened and greeted the entering ward sister with an anxious complaint about Francis’s cough, so that she went straight to her patient and let him get out of the door without her registering anything more about him.
John McLeish wasted no time in getting to the interview room in which Dr Antony Price was waiting. This was the break he had been waiting for, when the pressure applied by the sheer weight of an investigation started to cause cracks in the original accounts to appear. And this was a structural fault that was being revealed; what Antony Price had already told Davidson placed him by his father’s suspended body on Saturday morning. He stopped only to make sure he had everything Davidson knew.
‘The wee girl’s here,’ Davidson added, at the end of his account. ‘In a waiting-room.’
‘Not with Price?’
‘No. I thought he’d better be on his own. Face up to where he is.’
‘How long’s he been there? Twenty minutes? Give him another coffee, I’ll just have a word here.’
A few minutes with a suspect’s girlfriend would give him useful background against which to view the man. And besides, he was curious about any young woman who had managed to impress his wife.
‘I’m John McLeish, Francesca’s husband,’ he said, extending a hand to the exhausted young woman who looked up at him, eyes wide and wary. ‘Are you reasonably comfortable? Can we get you anything else?’
‘No. No, thank you. Will it … will you … be very long?’ He considered her, trying for a sensible answer, and she flushed. ‘You don’t know, of course.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t. I would be grateful if I could talk to you after I’ve talked to Dr Price, but do go back to … well, wherever … if you’d prefer that, just tell us where we can find you.’
‘I’d rather stay. I’ve got … I had an interview but I’ve rung up and cancelled.’ She looked at him. ‘I couldn’t do it anyway.’
‘What was it for?’
‘It was at Great Ormond Street. To see if I could get on to the research staff there.’
‘You’re training as a GP, Francesca tells me.’
The girl considered him and he saw that she had a good strong jaw. ‘Tell her … tell Francesca that I am going back to paediatrics, I am going to try to be a consultant. Just as soon as I can.’
‘I will. Now, I must go and talk to Dr Price.’
She nodded, her face pinched with anxiety, and he left her sitting tense on the edge of her chair. He collected Davidson and went into the interview room.
Antony Price looked quite different today from when they had interviewed him four days before. His face was thinner, the good bones showing so that he looked older and less charming. And there was something unfocused about the wide dark blue eyes, so that instead of looking confident and easy he looked driven, tense and braced for a struggle. If he were a dog, McLeish thought, one would go a long way round him. But this was a suspect in a murder case and the strategy that usually worked was to go in hard. He glanced at Davidson to make sure the tape was running.
‘Dr Price, I understand you want to change the statement you made to me on Monday,’ he said, formally, and was interested and mildly surprised to find that Antony Price had nerved himself to this task and, without apology, described his arrival at his father’s house on Saturday and discovery of the body hanging from the ceiling hook.
‘Did you have a key?’
‘Yes. Bill didn’t know I had, before you ask, but Sylvia had given me one after the incident when he beat her up. She thought it was a useful precaution, so she could ring me up if it happened again.’
‘Rather than ringing the police?’
‘Sylvia doesn’t have much confidence in the police. She’s Austrian and I understand the police there might not be very receptive to a complaint of that nature.’
He was looking past them both, jaw tight. The knowledge that he, too, had beaten up his woman, presumably in the faith that the police had no role in the matter, hung in the room, leaving McLeish a tempting side path down which he decided not to go. It was this man’s father, not his girlfriend, who had been murdered.
‘So you came through the front door?’
‘Yes. I didn’t expect to find anyone there. I thought Bill and Sylvia were both away, and Margaret Howard doesn’t work weekends.’
‘Even though it is a travel business?’ The point had worried McLeish and the team and he thought it was worth a minor diversion.
‘I don’t think Bill wanted to be accessible to anyone just at the moment. As I’m sure you know by now, he’d oversold places abroad and owed a lot of money here.’
‘I understand that neither you nor your brother were involved in the business.’
Antony Price considered him, mouth tight. ‘That’s right, and of course I only knew what Bill chose to tell me. I’d been to see him a week before to find out what had happened to the trust funds held for me and my brother. When I tackled him both about the trust and some cash for Francis, to pay off the rest of his debts, all I got was a long whinge about how tight cash was, and how every penny was needed in the business. So, as I was about to say, I decided to come back and have a look round myself.’
‘So you let yourself in with the key given you by Mrs Price.’ McLeish wanted this story in detail and in order, and this witness who had lied flatly once already could damn well answer questions this time. ‘Then what?’
‘Well, I thought I’d better check no one was around, so I called out something like “Anyone at home?” and got no answer. So I went upstairs to the flat and knocked there. Again no answer, so I used the other key and just checked there. Then I went back to the office.’
‘And did what?’ McLeish asked, after a pause.
‘Well, actually I just stood. The safe was open, you see. First thing I noticed, so I thought that somebody must be in the house and I’d better check the kitchen downstairs, in case they hadn’t heard me. I mean Sylvia, or Bill, might have been out in the garden.’ He stopped again, and McLeish waited, listening for the hesitations or the change of tone that would tell him when the man was lying again. Antony Price was sweating round the hair-line and while he had his hands out of sigh
t under the table the hunch of his shoulders told both experienced observers that all of him was clenched in resistance. ‘So I decided to go downstairs.’
‘Did you look in the safe?’
Antony hesitated and flicked a look at McLeish’s unmoving face. ‘Yes, I did. Of course I did. It was empty.’
‘Completely?’
‘Yes. Nothing in it at all.’
‘What would you have expected to see in there?’
‘Oh. The petty cash box. Margaret Howard was very keen on putting that away, though petty cash wasn’t what my father – Bill – was interested in. Grand larceny was more his form. And the Books. I’ve no idea what was in them, but it was some sort of accounts.’
Davidson shifted position, to signal that he thought his senior officer was missing something.
‘But what exactly had you come to look for, Dr Price? And why did you expect it to be in the safe?’
‘I wanted the trust accounts, or any correspondence about my mother’s trust. I thought he might have put the file in the safe, because I’d been asking about it. I didn’t know what the file looked like, but … well … I thought it would look like a file, I suppose. It doesn’t matter what I thought, it wasn’t there, nothing was, and so I went down to the kitchen. I didn’t dare poke around in the office and have a good look, because I thought someone must be in the house.’ He looked at them, then looked away at the walls.
‘You went downstairs,’ McLeish prompted.
‘Yes.’ He looked down at the table, then up again at their professionally expressionless faces. ‘Yes. Downstairs.’ He stopped again and they waited, listening to the tiny whirr of the tape. ‘When I opened the door I could see it straightaway.’
‘It was light then?’
‘It was nine thirty in the morning. Oh, no, sorry, I see what you mean. The curtains were drawn, but the lights were on.’
Two days later, on the Monday morning, Miles Arnold had come down those same stairs to total darkness, with the thick curtains drawn across the French windows.
‘Go on.’
‘It was just hanging there, I just saw the feet, and then you could tell straightaway what it was, I mean, it became a body.’