George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt

by Claire Rayner

  Then she blinked and almost dropped the pen in the sharpness of her reaction which had instantaneously brought back the cold feeling she had experienced earlier. In court? Giving evidence? What on earth was she thinking about? There was nothing to take to court, no case of any kind to answer. Gus had advised her to make the statement, ‘just for tidiness. So that afterwards no one can say we didn’t do it all by the book, see, doll? You make your statement, I’ll look into the chocolates business and find out what halfwit tried that hoary old trick and then we can forget all about it. But, bet your bottom dollar, if I didn’t get a statement out of you someone’d want to know why. This way we cover all our exits.’

  The coldness of the panic receded and with steady fingers she added the date and then pushed the document back to Sergeant Friel. ‘It’s all yours,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think there’s anything else.’

  ‘Superintendent Hathaway said to take you up to his office when we’d done this,’ the sergeant said, and George managed a smile at her for the first time. She was feeling steadily more comfortable and would have liked the girl to acknowledge that, but the sergeant just opened the door of the interview room to usher her out and then led the way up to Gus’s office.

  George followed the round buttocks, which swayed and bounced in a way that no doubt all the male officers in the nick found agreeable, in silence. Miserable creature, she thought, with her silly questions about the car. What has the car got to do with me?

  She said as much to Gus, exploding into words as soon as Sergeant Friel closed the door on herself. ‘I thought I was to make a statement just about the chocolates incident because of the card on the box,’ she said. ‘Why did Miss Self-Satisfied there ask questions about the car fire and put all that into the statement too?’

  ‘Because she’s a good copper, George,’ Gus said, shaking his head at her. ‘What’s happened to you? You’re not usually so jumpy.’

  ‘I’m not usually on this side in an investigation,’ she snapped.

  ‘That’s true,’ he allowed. ‘And it’s a nasty feeling, I’ll grant you. I remember it all too well.’ He smiled at her. ‘But you sorted me when I was in shtook, so let me sort you now, hmm?’

  ‘But why did she want to know about the car fire?’ George wasn’t going to be deflected that easily.

  ‘Because you must have mentioned it,’ Gus said. ‘I certainly didn’t. It was the chocolate incident you were to make a statement about. I gave Mary Friel no instructions in this, just told her you had a statement to make and she was to take it. So it was all down to you, wasn’t it?’

  She frowned, looking back over what had happened, and then slowly sat down. It had been her own doing, after all. She had chosen to start at the beginning, with her silly empty threats when she lost her temper with Sheila in the middle of the lab; and then she had had to mention the car fire, because why else would Sheila have been in the ENT Ward and in a position to have people send her poisoned chocolates? It had been her own mention of the event that had led to Sergeant Friel’s questions and those bald sentences about the car that had ended up in her statement. And that made her think.

  She sat up a little more straightly. ‘Gus, that makes me … Listen, what happened to Sheila’s car?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘No reason at all,’ she said slowly. ‘Of course you wouldn’t. I mean, the only people who were called were the fire brigade, not the police. There was no need for police, was there? But maybe … Gus, how close are you to the people at the brigade? Can you find out from them what happened to the car afterwards?’

  He looked at her sideways, then made a little grimace. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He picked up the phone and dialled and after a short wait asked for ‘the senior officer on duty on …’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and hissed at her, ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Yesterday evening,’ she hissed back. ‘The eighth of June.’

  He nodded and uncovered the mouthpiece, ‘Yesterday. Around seven p.m. This is Superintendent Hathaway of Ratcliffe Street Station. Yeah, yeah, I’ll hold.

  ‘God, how I hate that tinkling stuff they pour in your ears!’ he said savagely as he sat there waiting. George could hear it to be an unbearably sweet and romantic rendition of ‘Green-sleeves’ and nodded her strong agreement.

  The tinkling stopped at last and Gus became more alert. ‘Hello? Oh, hi, Paul. How are you? All well with the kids?… Great. Listen, mate, you had an incident yesterday at Old East, right? Car park … Uh-huh …’ He listened and then nodded. ‘Yeah, that was the story I got. So, tell me, were you at all bothered? Did you ask for any forensic check-ups on the car?… Mmm? I see …’

  The conversation went on for quite a while, with Gus being maddeningly monosyllabic, but then at last he said, ‘Right. What did you say? Yeah, I’ll hang on, only for crying out loud, don’t put that bloody music on again unless you want me to throw up down the phone.’

  He winked at George who opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head. ‘What was that? … Yup. Seventeen? … Oh, seventy. Right. And the phone number?’ He was scribbling on a scrap of paper; George strained to see, but she couldn’t. ‘OK, Paul. Ta for your help … What? Oh, yeah, next Friday. You’re putting a team in?… Good. We’ll slaughter you, of course, but it’s always a pleasure to kill a mate … Garn! You lot play the worst snooker this side of Tower Bridge and well you know it. Probably see you Friday, then, work permitting.’ He hung up.

  ‘So?’ George demanded. ‘What do they know?’

  ‘Not a thing!’ he said and reached for the phone again. ‘They thought it was just an ordinary electrics fault and told the owner she’d have to get the car sent to her own garage and assessed by the insurance people. They offered to arrange it with the garage for her — got them to pick it up and so forth — since she wasn’t fit herself, and to tell them how to deal with the foam extinguisher they used, so they could tell me which garage it had gone to. He’s given me the number. He also said they’re going to advise the hospital on the state of the car park as far as fire risk goes —’

  ‘Yeah,’ George said impatient. ‘But about Sheila’s car —’

  ‘I’m checking. Listen, George, don’t sit there listening. You drive me barmy the way you bounce around when I’m trying to talk on the phone, like you want to join in the conversation. I can’t handle that. I’ll make the call, you go and tart yourself up a bit. We’ll get a bit of supper as soon as I’ve got what I can here. It’s a bit late, so there mayn’t be anyone there, but I’ll have a go. When you’ve gone. Hop it, now.’

  She was too eager for him to make the call to argue, irritating though it was to be banished like a schoolgirl, but he wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t tidied herself before she left the path, lab, and, she knew she looked rumpled and a bit drawn. Repairs would be worthwhile indeed, and she tucked herself into the policewomen’s loo and began to deal with her hair and reapply some make-up. She was tolerably satisfied with herself as she snapped her bag shut, settled it over her shoulder and went back to Gus’s office.

  He was sitting staring out of the window when she came in and she stood beside the door, frowning slightly. ‘What’s the matter? No one there at the garage?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, yes. There was someone there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it turns out that there is something a bit…’ He sighed and got to his feet. ‘Listen, let’s go to supper, hey? I’m bloody starvin’, and you look as though you could make a nice hole in a good bit o’ fish. I’ll tell you when we get there.’

  He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He insisted on driving over to the restaurant. He wanted to use the one he’d recently opened a little further down Shadwell towards Docklands, in Cable Street, instead of going to his biggest place in Aldgate, which added to her impatience. But he still refused to talk.

  ‘Listen, I need time to get this sorted out in my head. Just be patient, will you? We’ll be there, we can
talk, it’ll be easier. Now do me a favour and belt up.’

  She belted up. There was nothing else she could do, and she somehow managed to stay silent until they were settled at a window table by his favourite manageress, Kitty, who always had the job of launching a new place, and who hurried off to get him his favourite fried halibut and the grilled sole which was all George wanted.

  ‘Now!’ she demanded. ‘Now will you tell me? And what it is that you have to be so — so secretive about it!’

  ‘I’m not being secretive,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I know you. If we talk about things that upset you in a public place, you won’t go off the handle the way you do if we’re on our own. You’re great at flying off into the stratosphere; like a Harrier jump jet, you are. Now …’ He paused and stared at her. ‘Keep your hair on, love, and listen. The car had been tampered with.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him with that now familiar and hateful wave of cold fear rising in her. ‘In what way? And does it affect me?’

  ‘I can tell you how,’ he said soberly, ‘but I can’t answer the rest of your questions yet. OK. They stripped the vehicle down and it really had been severely damaged. The insurance people won’t be able to argue that this isn’t a write-off or that Sheila’s not entitled to a new vehicle.’

  She tightened her jaw and began to look dangerous and he hurried on.

  ‘The problem was in the battery. Someone had pulled a sodding great lump of cable — really heavy stuff-across the battery and fitted it with a solenoid switch. Then it was connected up so that when Sheila switched on the engine, the whole of the electrics shorted and started to burn. The casings of the wires had gone and it’s a miracle that the bloody car didn’t blow up. It was a very thorough job, according to Trev.’

  ‘Trev?’

  ‘Trevor Lucan owns the garage. He’s got a bit of form — the occasional organizing of a ringer, a bit of co-operation with a tda, that’s taking and driving away — but he’s done his time and he’s been straight for three years. Or so he says. But it made him nervous when he spotted this and he wasn’t going to do nothing about it. If I hadn’t called and asked him direct for chapter and verse, well, he wasn’t about to come round the nick to tell us. But since I called, he reckons it was meant — he’s got a bit superstitious since he did his three years in the Scrubs — and he told me. So there it is, ducks. Someone does seem to have it in for Sheila. The business with the chocolates was the second attempt to get her. She’s going to need a lot of watching over, if you ask me.’

  ‘Yes,’ George said slowly. ‘Yes.’ She stared out of the window at the street beyond, her eyes blank. ‘And I’m going to need to do a lot to prove it’s nothing to do with me, right? Because I tell you, Gus, she’s convinced it is. So now what do we do?’

  8

  ‘What we do now,’ he said happily as Kitty arrived with her tray piled high, ‘is eat. No, don’t argue. You need your grub. And we’ll talk of everything and anything except this Sheila business. Like our holiday.’

  ‘Holiday!’ She’d completely forgotten the plan they’d considered, and it was hard to feel any enthusiasm for it now, but she sat and dutifully ate her supper while he chattered busily about the rival merits of Spain (‘The good old Balearics. They all go to Majorca still, you know!’), North Africa (‘Come with me to the Casbah, darlin’, and we’ll find you some exotic Arabian trousers to sit around in at home and get up to erotic Arabian games!’), and even, when she showed no particular interest in those, Hong Kong. ‘It won’t be there much longer, they tell me, and it’d be great to take a look at it.’

  ‘It’s no good, Gus. I can’t imagine going on holiday, not till this is all sorted out. To tell the truth, I hadn’t even got round to arranging the time off.’

  ‘You promised!’ He looked affronted.

  ‘Well, maybe I did. But under the circumstances —’

  ‘What circumstances? You’re really going over the top with this, you know.’ He put down his knife and fork with a clatter. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it but if we must, we must, and I’m here to tell you you’re being ridiculous. Whatever Madam Sheila says — and remember I know what she’s like as well as you do — you’ve had nothing to do with what’s going on there.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She put down her own fork with gratitude because she really wasn’t hungry, and stared at him. ‘If Selby and Sister Chaplin —’

  ‘Bugger Selby and Sister Chaplin,’ he roared to the delight of diners at nearby tables. ‘What do they know? Just what Sheila spouts at ’em.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Do shut up, George. You’re being a right dummy. Either we talk about goin’ on holiday — and you can go and sort out the dates with ’em on Monday — or we talk about the weather, or we talk about what we’re goin’ to do this weekend. Nothing else. I don’t intend to do any more about this business till Monday, because there’s no urgency about it, whatever you may think.’ He had to raise his voice again to ride over her protests. ‘And there’s an end of it.’

  ‘Oh, is it!’ she snapped, glaring at him even more furiously. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what’s happening this weekend, my friend. You’re going to spend it in your own flat, on your own. I’m not going to have you sitting around with me and paying no attention to what worries me most. Where do you get off telling me what I can and can’t worry about? It’s my life still, you know!’

  If he’d lost his temper back it would have been all right; she could have handled that. But he didn’t. He was all sweet reasonableness and she could have hit him for it.

  ‘Look, doll. I know this is an upsetting business, but really, you don’t have to worry yourself. I’m here to sort it and —’

  ‘So don’t you worry your pretty little head?’ she said with all the venom she could put into it. ‘Big Daddy’ll take good care of his little diddums? Well, little diddums has other ideas. So forget it. I’m going. Goodnight’ She pushed back her chair, grabbed her bag and marched out, leaving him and half the restaurant staring after her. It didn’t do much to resolve her problem but it sure as hell made her feel better.

  *

  Until she got back to the hospital. She could have gone back to the flat, of course, but the mere idea made her feel heavy and miserable. She needed company, someone to talk to, and she had a sudden image of the senior common room full of cheerful registrars and HOs and thought it would be fun, just like the old days when she’d been a resident herself, to go and sit among them and share the lousy coffee and warm beer and gossip. Well, maybe not gossip, she amended, sheering away from the implications of that, but certainly chatter.

  But the big cluttered common room, with its litter of newspapers and journals, of empty stained coffee mugs and biscuit crumbs, contained only a young woman in a rumpled white coat, fast asleep on a sofa at the far end. George stood at the door uncertainly, trying to decide what to do. It wasn’t all that late — perhaps nine o’clock — and the thought of wandering home just to shower and watch TV or whatever did not fill her with excitement. Besides, she had an idea that Gus might have ignored her insistence that he spend the weekend in his own flat. Perhaps he would just be waiting there when she got in (and a little bit of her mind whispered, ‘You’d be quite happy really, if he did, wouldn’t you?’ But that had to be ignored) and she was damned if she was going home a moment before midnight. Well, around midnight, anyway.

  Behind her the door opened. She turned happily and then caught her breath in surprise. Not at the sight of him — Zack Zacharius had every right to be there — but at the way seeing him made her belly lurch a little. She was delighted and she showed it, producing a wide and glittering smile.

  ‘That’s better!’ he said. ‘Last time we met you treated me with total disdain. How nice to see a welcome on your face. What are you doing here? You aren’t usually hanging around this squalid joint.’

  ‘I was looking for company,’ she said, embarrassed because her voice wasn’t fully under her control. ‘I was — I don’t
usually mind spending an evening alone but tonight I thought — So I came over to see who was around and what was up.’

  ‘Well, I’m around but there’s nothing much up,’ he said. ‘Everyone who isn’t working late on a Friday is off about their own affairs unless they’ve flaked out like that poor child over there.’ He lifted his chin at the girl on the sofa, who hadn’t stirred. ‘My God, but I’m glad to be through that stage of being part of the lowest form of hospital life!’

  ‘Me too.’ George looked at the girl briefly and then back at him. ‘Though it had its fun side too.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, there was some time off. Time to wander off to the local and have a drink and a gabfest and —’ She stopped, suddenly shy. In those old days, she remembered perfectly well, that was the form a date took when you went out with one of the other members of the medical staff. You sat in the pub and gossiped and then slid back either to your or their room and necked like fury until the phone or a bleeper would ring and drag you back to the real world.

  He seemed to be aware of what she was thinking because his mouth quirked a little and she thought, nice. Then looked away.

  ‘We’ll do just that. Give me a moment to get rid of this.’ He was shrugging out of his white coat, and she put out a hand to stop him.

  ‘Oh, listen. I wasn’t asking for a — I mean, if you have work to do —’

  ‘I’ve done it. Enough for tonight, anyway. And I only came over here for the same reason you did. I needed a bit of company. A chance to come down.’

  She was startled and looked it and he laughed. ‘It’s all right. I don’t mean I’ve been using interesting substances! Just that my adrenaline’s running high and I’m in no mood to go quietly off to my room and read myself to sleep. I need someone to talk to, and how lucky can I get? I find you in the same frame of mind. And there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, anyway. So it’s sort of meant. If we were superstitious we’d say the stars were on our side. Shall we go?’