‘I went to the operating theatres this morning, complete with a warrant and young Hagerty. Oh, you should have seen his face! The smell of the place put him right off for a start, and when they made us dress up in all the gear before they’d let us in, well, he was one miserable copper. Not that it’s surprising. He looked a real guy in all that green stuff. Me, I looked rather dashing, I thought. Maybe I should have been a surgeon instead of a copper, come to think of it. I’d have pulled a better class of bird then.’
He ogled her, expertly filling his mouth with another load of noodles, and then added a large prawn, after which he closed his eyes in ecstasy. ‘This is what I call heaven. You can’t beat a nice bit o’ Chinese when you’re in the mood for it, can you?’
‘I swear I’ll stick you with one of your own goddamned chopsticks!’ she cried. ‘Tell me!’
‘I am telling you! OK, we tog up and start looking. It seems there’s this big special changing room in the middle of the unit where they all get into their gear — outdoor clothes have to be plague spots the way they carry on. Everyone has a sort of share of a locker there. Not their very own, you understand. Just enough to put their street clothes in. Then if they need them, there’s a second lot of lockers in an adjoining room, and people can put stuff there that they want to leave all the time. OK, so Tony Mendez is one of the geezers that has a locker all to himself in this other section.’ He shook his head and speared another prawn. ‘It’s really amazing to me. The man’s been dead for weeks and no one, but no one, has done anything about emptying his locker and putting it back into use again for someone else. And they’ve got a shortage of’em!’
‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ George said. ‘It’s typical of Old East. Unless someone somewhere has a chitty to instruct ’em, nothing gets done. It’s my guess no one thought to ask for a chitty’
‘Well, I’m delighted they didn’t.’ Gus put down his chopsticks, picked up his little cup of jasmine tea and plonked his elbows on the table with the delicate piece of porcelain held between both hands. It looked absurdly fragile, framed by his big knuckles. ‘He wasn’t a very nice man, this Mendez.’
‘Oh?’ She too picked up her cup and adopted the same posture so that they sat very close together. She could see the flecks of green in the depths of his dark eyes that she so liked, but for once she was more interested in what he had to say than anything else about him. ‘How come?’
‘I’ve nothing against a bit of honest porn,’ Gus said. ‘I’ll read a Playboy as cheerfully as the next man —’
‘I’ll bet you will.’
‘— but cutting out some of the raunchier pictures and keeping them in an envelope underneath smelly old shoes, that’s sick, ’n’t it?’
‘Is that all you found?’ She was disappointed. ‘I imagine you’d find that, or some variation of it, in nearly all the male lockers in the place.’
‘No,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Do me a favour! I’m just telling you, because it’s a sort of indicator, know what I mean? Like litmus paper. A man who cuts out and hides stuff like that, like some sort of smutty schoolboy, instead of being upfront and honest and just enjoying it — well, there’s something about him I don’t warm to.’
She wouldn’t be deflected, much as she’d like to point out to him just how prejudiced he was being. ‘So what did you find?’
‘He was cannier than Lally was.’ He put down his cup and started again on the noodles. ‘She sort of hid her stuff on that rear shelf, but she didn’t go out of her way to make sure people who knew the design of the things wouldn’t find them. Matey Mendez was another piece of fish. He’d rigged up a contraption that hung from the back of his top shelf, down the other side of the back of the locker — there was room, because it was in a corner, and had a box thing tied to it. You never saw such a Heath Robinson affair. The thing about it was, though, that unless someone really searched, and pulled out all the stuff he had hanging in front of the string, you wouldn’t spot it. Very ingenious. It could hold a fair bit of weight, and was adjustable too. When he had a lot of gear in it he could sling it high; when it wasn’t full, down it went.’
‘And that was where you found the Playboy cuttings?’
‘If it had only been Playboy! These were really nasty, believe me. Yeah, they were there. And a couple of envelopes of photographs which were almost as bad as the professional stuff, only uglier if that’s possible, and the bottle.’
‘The vodka.’
‘Yup. That’s what the label said.’
‘The label was right. Up to a point’ She jumped up to bring him Jerry’s preliminary report. ‘He’ll get all that properly typed up tomorrow. Mine too. But we thought you’d like to see these as soon as possible.’
‘Thanks.’ He was reading the report with his brows a little tight. ‘I take it this means that —’
‘I’ll explain.’ She took it from him. ‘The amount of alcohol you’d find in a vodka with a label like the one on the bottle is fairly easy to assay. When Jerry tried to he got this way-out reading. It was much higher than it should be. So he started to do an analysis and came to the conclusion it had been spiked with absolute alcohol.’
‘Absolute?’
‘Officially, in the British Pharmacopoeia, alcohol is defined as ethyl alcohol, or ethanol BP, if you like the name better, and it’s —’
‘I know that. Every copper does. It’s ninety-five per cent ethyl alcohol and five per cent water.’
‘Right. Absolute alcohol, which we use in the labs, is much stronger. It contains no more than one per cent weight of water.’
‘So its proof is —’
‘No, the proof is double the alcohol per cent. So one hundred proof whisky is fifty per cent alcohol. Absolute alcohol is damn near two hundred proof. And exceedingly toxic at that level.’
‘I’ve always known more about the effects of the stuff than how it was measured,’ he said, concentrating hard. ‘Remind me how he died. Was it consistent with alcohol poisoning?’
‘Oh, yes. Especially in a man who had a history of heavy alcohol abuse. I said as much in my report on his PM. What happened to him was textbook. He collapsed. He wasn’t too big so the amount needed to knock him out was smaller than it might have been for a huskier guy. Anyway, in the middle of a case in theatre, he began to stagger severely, lost his balance, fell and went into a convulsion. By the time he’d been pulled out of the theatre — they were in the middle of operating, remember — he was in a coma. And he just never came out of it.’
‘How come no one thought of alcohol then? He must have smelled of it.’
‘Actually they did, even though alcohol of itself hardly smells at all. It’s the flavourings and congeners and suchlike put in it so people can take it that give it fragrance. Vodka is popular with secret drinkers because it doesn’t smell and absolute alcohol smells even less. But for all that they did think it could be alcohol — someone remembered his history — but no one mentioned that fact when they sent him down to A & E. So no one there tested for alcohol at the time, before he died. Not that it would have mattered if they had. He was gone in under an hour. It wasn’t till I got him that alcohol was looked for and found.’
‘Could you tell from the tests you did whether or not he’d had this absolute alcohol?’
She shook her head. ‘The reading of the blood alcohol I got was high, but it didn’t tell me what sort of alcohol he’d swallowed. It’s very hard to judge, after death, how much was taken. There are so many factors involved in making an assessment, you see. I could tell you what his BAC — blood-alcohol concentration — was, but to deduce from that how much he’d had was impossible. The parameters of calculation, like his weight, his basic metabolic rate, his drinking history, the timing, the rate of absorption: they were much too woolly to give me hard answers. All I could be sure of was that he’d died of alcohol poisoning, and that it could have been the result of just one unguarded ordinary drink! That’s what my report said, anyway. I’m sure I tol
d you all this, Gus.’
‘Probably. I’m just checking. Here was someone regarded in the place as a recovered alcoholic who dies of alcohol poisoning …’
‘Yup.’
‘And everyone just accepts that as an accident.’
‘Well, why not?’ She was defensive. ‘It was a logical conclusion.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said soothingly. ‘I was recapping, not criticizing. So how did you know he was a recovered drinker?’
She blinked. ‘It was general knowledge,’ she said a little uncertainly. ‘I had the impression he was in AA.’
‘Oh, it’s hell getting any info out of Alcoholics Anonymous! But I suppose it’s worth a try.’ He got to his feet. ‘Let’s see if he carried an AA contact number on him. Some drinkers do. I haven’t gone through all his stuff in detail yet. It was getting late, so I packed it all into my briefcase to deal with tomorrow. But hang on a bit.’
She followed him into the living room. He’d thrown his briefcase on to the sofa in his usual fashion and now he emptied it on to the cushions. ‘The fellas from prints and photo and so forth have all done their bit with this stuff so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go through it now. I’ve an odd feeling that I spotted something when I first took a look.’
He was picking up one plastic envelope after another and tipping the contents out on to his lap. There were the sleazy cuttings from magazines he’d mentioned, and the photographs, but he shoved them back into their covering quickly. She was a little amused by that: as though she hadn’t seen much nastier stuff in her time! Then she forgot the amusement as he let out a little yelp of satisfaction.
‘What is it?’ she demanded.
He had a pile of cards in his hand, the sort that clutter most people’s wallets: a cheque card from the Midland Bank, an Access card, a Union membership card; a card from a taxi firm, assuring holders of their Best Attention At All Times, Just Call This Number; a battered green and black phone-card from BT; an RAC membership card — and another, at which Gus was staring.
‘Have you ever heard of something calling itself the SDAW Club?’ he asked.
‘SDAW? I don’t think so. What does it mean?’
‘It just says it here. SDAW Club. Now, what do you suppose that’s all about?’
She reached over, holding out her hand, and he gave it to her. It was a small piece of buff card, with rather uneven lettering on it which looked slightly amateur, as though it had been designed and printed on someone’s not very good word processor. The letters ‘SDAW’ were large and slightly off centre, and beneath them was an 0836 phone number. A mobile phone. That was all. The reverse was bare of printing but carried another phone number in scribbled pencil, which was so rubbed it was virtually unreadable.
Gus took the card back. ‘I think a phone call,’ he murmured. ‘What’s the time? Nearly ten? A good time to be ringing people, don’t you think? Especially those with poser phones. They never switch ’em off.’
‘It could be.’ She was excited suddenly and followed him eagerly to the small table on which her phone sat, and watched him dial.
The phone rang for a long time. For a moment she thought, we’ve struck a dry well, but then he lifted his chin and spoke.
‘Hello? Is that the — urn — SDAW Club? Oh, hello. Am I — er, could I speak to the — um — someone in charge? The membership secretary, perhaps?’
He listened. Slowly the expression in his eyes sharpened and became fixed and after a while he nodded. ‘I see. So there isn’t precisely a list of members,’ he said and listened again. ‘If I mentioned a name to you, would you perhaps know who — Oh, me? I’m just a friend. Another friend, you understand.’ Again there was silence as he stared blankly at the opposite wall. George felt she’d burst with curiosity but then he grinned, a small conspiratorial smile. ‘I see,’ he said softly. ‘I see. Very. Now, do tell me — What? — Oh. Well, that’s kind of you. OK, I’ll give it some thought.’ And he hung up and turned to George.
‘So tell me! What is this SDAW Club?’
‘I still don’t know what the letters mean precisely,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you this much. It’s just a group of friends.’
‘A group of —?’
‘Friends. Well, she admitted they were accidental friends.’
She shook her head at him in exasperation. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘She was cagey, the lady on the other end of the phone. But I think I might have worked it out. Or be on the way to working it out. She admitted that it was a club of people who had all been ill together. In St Dymphna’s hospital’
‘St Dymphna’s?’ That was an old hospital not too far away from Old East which dealt mainly with the handicapped and the pyschiatrically ill. It was the centre for the local Community Initiative for the mentally ill and as such highly unpopular with the local people, who blamed the hospital for every wino, mugger and beggar in the local streets. The fact that there were no more than there always had been in Shad-well for the past half-dozen centuries escaped the complainers; they preferred to hate St Dymphna’s. ‘What on earth,’ she said, ‘would a person like Tony Mendez be doing belonging to a group of… Oh!’
‘Precisely! People who have been ill together, she said. Not a real club, just a group of mutually supportive friends. That was all.’
‘So, Mendez had some sort of psychiatric illness —’ George said. ‘In the new thinking, that is. In the past, he’d have been considered weak and in need of AA —’
‘But nowadays you send drunks to a psychiatric unit. That’s what happened to Mendez. And when he got better he joined the club.’
‘Is that what the S and the D part is? St Dymphna’s?’
‘I imagine so. She didn’t say, so we don’t know what AW means. But it is a club. The idea was, the woman told me, that they could help each other through crises.’
‘Hmm,’ George said. ‘Pity he didn’t call her that morning before he took his vodka.’
‘Indeed. And also, why was he using vodka regularly at all? He clearly was.’ He looked happy suddenly. ‘This is getting exciting. To find out more about Mendez and what happened to him we’ll need to go along to St Dymphna’s and make a few enquiries, won’t we? It’s getting more and more tangled. Just the sort of case I like best.’
29
They went to St Dymphna’s together. There was no way she would be deflected. The fact that she had work to do in her own department, that properly speaking it was not normal practice for a police pathologist to accompany investigating officers on their enquiries, that Gus would have preferred to get the visit over and done with on his own: none of these counted. George was going with him and that was an end of it. He gave up arguing very early on.
‘It feels odd coming here again,’ she said as the wheels of his old car squealed on the newly tiled driveway that led up to the front of the Victorian building, a ten-minute drive from Old East. ‘It’s looking a bit glitzy, isn’t it? Lots of new paint and a new drive. It must have cost a fortune. I wonder where they get their extra money from? Surely not the NHS. If they do, though, we could do with some of it at Old East.’
‘Monty Ledbetter gave them a big gift,’ Gus said in a flat colourless tone as he switched off the engine. ‘After Maureen died.’
‘Oh.’ She sat silently staring out at the bright flower-beds that adorned the sides of the pathway. She had got to know Monty and Maureen Ledbetter a little too well during their last big case, when Gus had had so many problems and she had to deal with them almost single-handed. It had been a difficult time; and now Gus leaned over and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m glad you’ve come with me on this one, George,’ he said quietly, ‘No matter what I said before we started.’
She grinned at him sideways, a crooked sort of grin that had some irony in it. ‘Thanks sweetheart. Remind me to write to Monty when we get home. I wrote after Maureen died, but —’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s always harder to help when it’s a
suicide. Well, that’s the way it goes, I suppose. Come on. We’ve got work to do.’ He got out of the car. ‘Hagerty should be here in a minute. I told him to use his own transport; I have to go up to the Yard right after this. Got a meeting.’
‘No!’ she said with her eyes wide. ‘How novel!’ He made a face at her and, as they walked up to the front door of the hospital, pinched her bottom so hard that she squealed. It felt good to be with him; there was a closeness that wrapped them today that filled her with good humour. Even investigating death was fun when she did it with Gus.
Hagerty had already arrived and was sitting in the hallway under the white marble statue of a long-dead Victorian benefactor of the hospital, staring gloomily at the vast brass plaque which bore the names of other citizens who had given the hospital money.
‘Morning, Guv.’ He got lugubriously to his feet. ‘I was just thinking, pity we don’t run hospitals the way they used to, with people giving money out of the goodness of their hearts instead of us having to nag the bloody Government all the time to look after the NHS. Oh, sorry, doc. No criticism of you or Old East meant, of course.’
‘What do you mean, of course?’ she said. ‘Of course you were criticizing us, and you’ve got a point. Old East is cruddy, falling down around our ears. Not like this, all shiny and well polished.’ She looked around at the thickly beeswaxed parquet floor and fresh paint. ‘But it’s what we do in the old buildings that matters most, not what they look like. And I can tell you, buster, from bitter American experience, it’s better to be sick in the UK than the US. Disease doesn’t put you on the breadline here the way it does some people at home.’
George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt Page 28