The Unkindest Cut

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘I was sure you’d still be hungry and thirsty. And obviously you’ve been very brave.’ Ian was suddenly acting like the compassionate friend (as he was in his role of the husband of her maid of honour Deborah) rather than a serious police inspector, and Jane, who had not been feeling at all brave, suddenly felt like getting the shakes. ‘You said that the voice was disguised,’ Ian continued, once again the detective. ‘And you said that he was slim and that his yelp was high pitched. Could it have been a woman?’

  Jane felt her insides settle down while she had something to puzzle over. She sipped her champagne. This was definitely her best batch ever. Of course, with a larger batch it was easier to keep the temperature constant, she mulled. After a few moments contemplating the merits of the champagne, she caught the detective’s questioning and slightly impatient expression and her thoughts returned to the question at hand.

  ‘Possible,’ she said. ‘Definitely a possibility. I didn’t notice it at the time because he or she was flat-chested; but the voice was what in today’s jargon they would probably call gender unspecific or unisex or something, rather gruff for a woman’s but if it had been above a whisper I think it might have been high-pitched for a man. I didn’t see the face or notice the bum. I didn’t really see he, she, or whatever walking as they ran off when making their escape, which gives less indication of sex, I always find. In the surgery itself, during the burglary I was concentrating on not getting hurt rather than on my attacker’s physique!’

  Ian nodded an acceptance of this last comment and while he finished his note-taking there was silence in the office. The music had stopped. Jane could hear a voice and occasional bursts of laughter. The traditional speeches had begun. The programme for a normal wedding had been resumed – without the bride, which Jane thought was really rather odd, but she supposed the planned schedule was being followed religiously and she should be pleased about that considering she’d organized it all in the first place …

  ‘Happily nobody was injured,’ Ian continued. ‘But we can’t just let the matter drop because the next attempt might be more determined and the outcome more serious. Now let’s talk about drugs. What drugs did he get away with?’

  ‘Not much to interest an addict unless he wanted to cure his kennel cough. Some morphine. I can list the rest when I get the opportunity to check my cupboards and my files,’ Jane offered.

  ‘That would be very useful, thanks. Did anything about him suggest that he was an addict?’ Ian asked.

  Jane put down her plastic champagne glass so that she could shrug more expressively. ‘How in God’s name would I know?’ she enquired rhetorically. ‘His head was covered, his eyes were shadowed and there was no other flesh showing except where I stuck in the needle. If it’s any help, he – or she – didn’t have any twitches or shakes or look particularly sweaty.’

  Ian Fellowes refused to take offence. He nodded. ‘You haven’t given us much to go on. Just a very approximate size. We don’t even know what sex. Unless he – or, as you say, she – makes a habit of it, we’re up a gum tree. I’ll put the word around, we’ll put a formal statement on record and hope that it’s a one-off, but somehow I doubt it. Go and do your duty dances, Mrs Fox. If you can point out the mother of that boy, do so. And I wish you a long and happy marriage.’

  FIVE

  The immediate honeymoon of the happy couple took place at home over a period of several hours, the honeymoon proper being planned as a sunshine holiday in Mauritius, some time about the following Christmas if Roland’s share of the film advance arrived in time.

  The next day being Sunday they would usually have had a ‘long lie in’. To a young couple following divergent careers, Sunday morning is usually sacred; but Jane was torn between the needs to do something magical with the borrowed wedding dress, to give Whinmount the cleaning and tidying that had been neglected in the run-up to the wedding day, to restore order to her surgery or to go and help put Kempfield back into some sort of useable state. She was spared the need to choose between all the competing demands by a message from Detective Inspector Ian Fellowes inviting her, in terms not open to refusal, to attend a discussion in his office forthwith. So that decided her and she instead called Helen Maple, the local factotum and sometime cleaner, to spruce up the surgery for the usual fee. That did at least make a token start to her responsibilities.

  Roland’s introduction to the married state, therefore, consisted of being left alone with a long list of instructions, these to be implemented during the absence of his bride. He set his word processor to boot up and fell asleep in his chair. Honeymoons can be hard work, especially when champagne is involved.

  As Jane, dressed in what she thought of as suitably sober garb for a session with the police, drove down the hill and into the town, she had a view of the streets. The whole place was emptier than usual and had a slightly hung-over look about it. Church services would have finished but perhaps the congregations were lingering in prayer for forgiveness of any sins that might have been committed at the wedding party under the influence of elderflower champagne. She parked outside her surgery as usual. Helen’s scooter was already stationed there and she could see a shadow on the glass as a female figure could be seen scrubbing up the bloodstains. Jane walked across the Square to where the old police building frowned reprovingly at the empty spaces. Behind it the tall extension of the newer building towered more cheerfully.

  Newton Lauder had grown into the policing centre for that part of the Borders but the CID presence was still small. She entered by the old doorway and was escorted by DS Bright to Ian’s new office on the sunny side of the new building. Ian was waiting alone. In keeping with the usual pennywise policy of bureaucracy, his office was not quite large enough for its purpose. Through his window she could almost see her home in the distance, peeping through the trees. Evidently this was to begin as a threesome discussion. She was offered coffee and although she had taken breakfast within the previous hour she accepted gratefully. It turned out to be much better coffee than on her previous visits, or else she was much thirstier. She placed a box on a desk that left barely adequate space around it for three chairs. Bright put a tape recorder beside it and set it working. Then she had to wait while Ian went through the routine of recording the date, time, place and those present. It was a drill that she had encountered previously when she’d been involved in the search for a missing boyfriend of her sister’s years ago. Back then she’d been the heroine of the piece, but this time was a different matter.

  Ian was looking serious, no longer the jolly wedding guest. ‘There have been no more occurrences involving knives so far,’ he said, ‘thanks be, although it’s still early days, being only twenty-four hours or so since your burglary. With luck that may be the last of it; but in my experience these incidents often turn out to be the openers for something more serious. The whole of a boozy evening, if you don’t mind me referring to your wedding in those terms, went past with remarkably little trouble. Kempfield seems to be more than fulfilling its purpose in keeping the younger and wilder set occupied without recourse to mischief. Of course he – for the sake of simplicity let’s go on thinking of the culprit as male – may have decided that crime isn’t so easy after all, especially once you’re carrying a microchip under your skin; but the first venture into robbery usually happens at a time of desperation. An addict going without, breadwinner losing his job and seeing his family hungry, that sort of thing.’ He paused, expecting a comment, but Jane decided to take what he said as a statement of fact requiring no answer. She bowed gravely and waited.

  ‘In case we get a wounding with a sharp blade,’ Ian resumed, ‘or another knifepoint robbery, I want to be ready to move immediately. I’m asking the uniformed branch to tell all officers to be alert and call in any incidents that might be leading towards knife crime and also to stop and search, very cautiously, anyone of either sex who appears to be carrying a hidden knife or other weapon. Now, let’s return to the matter of your statement.
Have you thought any more about the person who threatened you? Can you add anything to your description?’ Ian asked hopefully.

  ‘No, nothing,’ Jane admitted, wondering if her visit to the police station had been in vain. She had been hoping for news of a possible arrest at the very least.

  ‘Did you perhaps notice any aroma that might give us a clue? Perfume? Aftershave? Unpleasant body odour?’

  ‘Nothing that I can recall. I only had the intruder’s company for barely a couple of minutes, remember, during which I was a trifle overwrought.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Now, we haven’t yet identified the youth who brought you the puppy. Have you been able to identify his mother yet? Do you think that this boy could possibly have gone outside, donned the mask and returned?’

  ‘Not in the time available,’ Jane said. ‘Quite impossible. Anyway, he went ahead and pushed a packet of salt through the letter box and I really can’t see an attacker doing that. Or might he see not doing so as perhaps looking suspicious? Anyway, I was being attacked at the time he pushed the salt through the letter box, so it couldn’t have been him. And I’m afraid I haven’t been able to match up mother and son yet, so I can’t help you with his identification. But as I don’t think it could be him, perhaps there’s no point in worrying about that?’ Jane asked hopefully, dreading a long drawn out process of needless identifying of someone who wasn’t going to help lead them anywhere anyway.

  ‘It could be possible that they were in it together, using the puppy as a distraction to get you on your own in your surgery perhaps.’ Ian again looked rather hopeful at this possibility, but moved on to his next question as he saw Jane’s frown and shake of the head. ‘OK, well, if we get our hands on your assailant, would he have your DNA or the puppy’s on him?’

  Jane almost laughed. ‘Not a hope! I never touched him except with a fat hypodermic needle. He might have got a little of the puppy’s blood on him, I suppose. Speaking of the puppy, can I have the body incinerated yet?’

  Ian looked at her sharply and then shook his head. ‘Not yet. It’ll prove to be a huge waste of expensive time but I’d better have the Forensics Department in Edinburgh look it over. Now tell me all about microchips.’

  ‘I don’t know a lot about microchips,’ Jane admitted. ‘Just enough to implant one – I use a simple syringe although you can get more sophisticated gadgets – and to read the number of the bar code off the reader. We then register that number and if the patient turns up, alive or dead, we can find out who was the owner at the time. I’ve never known anybody want it taken out again; if there’s a change of ownership we only have to notify the registering office, but in this case the bandit might well want to be rid of it. If the chip was just under the skin that would be easy, but in my aggravation I jabbed it well in. I suggest that you have all doctors and surgeons warned to report if they’re approached to remove a chip.’

  ‘Good point. We’ll do that. Bright.’ Ian looked over at DS Bright and nodded in acknowledgement that this was to be his job. ‘But, Jane, could you remove that chip from his back?’ he continued.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I could. I put it in so I’d know roughly where to look for it. I could remove it from the same general area of a sheep or a horse so, given a patient who would accept an anaesthetic, I could take it out of a person. I would be breaking the law but I could do it.’

  ‘Then we’d better include all vets in the circular. Who else?’

  The two men watched Jane hopefully while she thought about it. She felt as if they were waiting for her to sing or to do a conjuring trick. ‘Dentists, probably. ER nursing staff perhaps. If I think of any other profession, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Do that. And we’ll try to keep an eye on you for your safety, though I suppose you’ll be the last person he’d allow near him carrying something sharp. How close would you have to get to tell whether an animal had been microchipped?’

  ‘Really close. It’s not as though I landed him with the sort of transponder they attach to wildlife. This is only designed to give a number close up. I don’t begin to get a reading until I’m almost touching the animal. If you were thinking of a scanner that could pick up the presence of a microchipped person in a crowd …?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Standard equipment wouldn’t do it. I brought my reader along to show you.’ She opened the plastic box she’d brought with her and put on Ian’s desk and drew out a neat instrument resembling an early mobile phone. ‘You should go and talk to Mr Ilwand at the TV and computer shop. He designs that sort of gear. I seem to remember that there was a gadget on the market some years ago for detecting microwaves if they were escaping from a microwave oven and endangering the cook. It had to be taken off the market because it was too sensitive. He might be able to cobble together something like that for you—’

  Jane was interrupted by a knock and the entry of a young man in plain clothes and plastic gloves. He had once brought her a shorthaired pointer puppy for neutering. He turned out to be one of Ian’s constables. He delivered a paper bag to Ian, gave Jane a friendly nod and departed.

  ‘This,’ Ian said, ‘will be a selection from the rubbish swept up and emptied from the waste bins at Kempfield last night. We were lacking any starting point whatever. It seemed to me that our culprit either did or did not visit Kempfield in an attempt to establish some sort of alibi. If not, then we start with the comparatively limited number of people of suitable physique who were not present. But you said that he had stuffed a handful of your duplicates into his pockets and he would have had to get rid of them. I really couldn’t see him having a little private bonfire. And as long as he was walking around with his pockets full of your credit card slips he was marked. So I had my boys bag up the rubbish collected from Kempfield, separating out and discarding obvious irrelevancies like toffee papers. A couple of beat bobbies are looking in the town’s waste bins. Give me a moment for a glance at this little lot …’

  From his desk drawer he took similar gloves to those the constable had been wearing and drew them on. He sniffed the bag suspiciously and then tipped it out on to his unused blotter. ‘It’s a long shot. I don’t suppose there will be anything,’ he began, ‘but when you start with nothing—’ His voice broke off abruptly. There were more paper scraps than Jane would have expected. Ian took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and turned over two of them. ‘Credit card slips!’ he said. ‘No, don’t touch them, they won’t have been fingerprinted yet, but take a look and tell me if you issued them.’

  Jane was experienced enough in the ways of the police to know that her evidence might later become important. ‘I identify these two slips as having been printed by the credit card machine in my office,’ she said carefully. ‘I remember putting through both transactions. You jammy devil! But how stupid to dump that at Kempfield!’

  Ian shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. He kept the money that he was after but he didn’t want to be caught with anything on him as incriminating as the credit card slips so he got rid of them in the first litter bins that he came to – probably before getting rid of his gloves unless he really is stupid.’ He shuffled the papers back into the bag. ‘This can go for examination and fingerprinting. So … it would seem that our knife-wielding robber came straight to Kempfield. Bright, go next door, get on the phone and invite Lucas Fraine to join me immediately. We’ll see if Mr Fraine can possibly say who arrived at Kempfield and joined the wedding party just before the bride made her spectacular entry or soon afterwards. I’m sorry,’ he added quickly, ‘I shouldn’t pull your leg about your state of dress. You looked quite—’

  He was interrupted, rather to Jane’s relief, by the ringing of one of the two phones on Ian’s desk. He snatched it up. ‘I thought I said no interruptions.’

  The female voice was quite unflustered. ‘Yes, I know, unless there were reports of a potential knife crime, you said,’ the voice insisted. ‘Then you’d want to know and that’s what I’ve got here.’

  ‘I’ll take the ca
ll,’ Ian said.

  ‘I’m just putting it through,’ said the voice complacently. Ian would not have been given the option of refusing it.

  Ian listened, his brow growing ever angrier, to several minutes of a report in a voice so thickly accented that such words as escaped in Jane’s direction were unintelligible. He grunted an acknowledgement and said, ‘Tell them to bring the boy in. And have the place locked up until we know what we’re looking for.’ He hung up.

  ‘They got him?’ Jane said.

  ‘No such luck! Just what I was afraid of has happened – a knifepoint robbery. You know Hugh Dodd?’

  ‘Yes. He cuts my grass for me once a week in summer. But it couldn’t be him, he’s more thickset than my robber and a little taller.’

  Ian frowned at her leap to an erroneous conclusion. ‘Nobody’s suggesting that he’s the guilty party. He was on duty at the filling station, taking petrol money. Somebody with a knife walked in and emptied the till. He isn’t hurt.’

  SIX

  DI Fellowes was looking at Jane thoughtfully. She was quite used to being looked at by men but she was now a respectably married lady and if he was relishing the erotic memory of her in her nightdress and bridal veil, which must surely have resembled something out of a soft porn film, then that, she thought, was quite enough of that. ‘You’ve finished with me?’ she asked.