A Life for a Life

by Andrew Puckett

  ‘That would depend on whether or not they knew she’d changed her mind about Alkovin, Inspector.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lyn after another pause.

  They went through everything again, then Lyn wrote it down in the form of a statement, which Fraser read through before signing every page. Then, after he’d been told not to leave the area without telling the police first, a constable was found to take him back to his car.

  He felt utterly drained and had no sense of time whatsoever – it seemed both minutes and days since he’d last seen the driveway and Connie’s house. The area round the door had been cordoned off and people were still working there. Fraser didn’t know whether Connie’s body had been removed, although he assumed it had.

  It wasn’t until he was driving home that he remembered that Frances was with Mary. He rang her number as soon as he got back. Mary answered.

  ‘Fraser, where have you been?’

  ‘Is Frances OK?’

  ‘She’s tired and doesn’t want to drive back. We’ve been trying to phone you, but she’s thinking now she might as well stay here the night.’

  ‘Is she actually with you now?’

  ‘Er – she’s in the living-room at the moment.’

  ‘Listen, Mary…’ He quickly told her what had happened. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea for Frances to know about it, not yet.’

  ‘I think you’re right, Fraser.’

  ‘I’ll come and pick her up tomorrow morning.’

  Mary called Frances over to the phone. She asked him what he had been doing and he improvised, quite imaginatively, he thought.

  ‘Have you got your Smarties there with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes – don’t worry, I won’t forget to take them. I don’t want to go back there again,’ she added in a small voice.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘A bit washed out, otherwise OK. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  He cooked himself a meal which he couldn’t finish. He mowed the lawn, tried to tidy up the garden. His nerves were fired up with static and he couldn’t settle to anything.

  There was a goodish film on TV which killed a couple of hours, but after that, nothing, so he tried to read a book. It was then that he realised he should have rung Marcus Evans at home to tell him what had happened. Too late now, do it tomorrow.

  He was certain he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but felt guilty about drinking, since he’d been doing so much lately. Sure enough, as soon as his eyes were closed, images of Connie’s face with wide open eyes paraded through his mind… and the pool of blood and the somehow pathetic puddle of urine.

  So, who…?

  Ian? Leo?

  He’d have thought Leo the most likely, but for the fact that he’d arrived after Fraser – His eyes snapped open in the dark. But who was to say that he hadn’t been there before, as well?

  He got out of bed, padded downstairs and found pen and paper, also a glass, which he filled with whisky – there’d be no sleep unless he had something.

  He started writing down everything he could remember about Leo and Alkovin, about Leo’s demeanour when he’d turned up so fortuitously at Connie’s. He topped up his glass.

  It was after two when he went back to bed. He fell into a dream in which Connie pursued him, telling him that it was all Frances’ fault, until at last she screamed at him and he awoke to the strident chirrup of the phone.

  ‘Hello…’

  ‘Fraser, it’s Mary.’ Her voice was shot with panic. ‘Frances is having some kind of fit. What shall I do?’

  ‘Describe it.’

  ‘She started screaming, then she smashed a cereal bowl on the floor, now she’s lying on the sofa, crying.’

  Fraser tried to think… ‘It’s probably best if I come over, I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘All right, but please hurry…’

  He banged the phone down and swung out of bed – and immediately toppled on to the floor.

  His head alternately throbbed and spun… He heaved in some deep breaths, then slowly pushed himself up again… A bit shaky, not too bad. He pulled on some clothes, made for the loo. Perhaps he should have told her to phone Dr Parker… No – quicker if he went.

  Had to have some coffee… He went downstairs, put on the kettle – Shit! What if he was still over the drink drive limit?

  Too bad.

  He chewed up some paracetamol, then slopped some hottish water on to the coffee granules and swallowed down the resulting slurry. Opened the door, sucked in a few more deep breaths before unlocking the garage.

  The MG started immediately and he left it running while he closed the garage. Turned to find a police car pulling up in front. His aching head smouldered as two men climbed out and approached him.

  ‘Dr Callan?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m afraid I can’t stop—’

  ‘We’ve come to take you down to the station, sir.’

  ‘It’ll have to wait, my fiancée’s ill and I have to go and—’

  ‘This isn’t a request, sir.’

  ‘She’s ill, dammit – I’m sorry, but you’ll have to—’

  One of them gripped his arm. ‘Please don’t make this – hweeer…’

  His breath wheezed out as Fraser’s elbow jabbed into his belly and he fell back clutching it. The other lunged at him, but his chin somehow ran into Fraser’s fist. Fraser pushed him over and leapt into his car, gunned the engine, ploughed through his neighbour’s lawn and away.

  Oh shit shit shit what have I done…?

  He put his foot down.

  For insurance purposes, the MGB is classified as a sports car, but other than for its road holding, it has no advantage over an average family saloon, let alone a police car. Two of them cut him off a mile from Mary’s house.

  He got out and stood still as they cuffed his hands behind his back and bundled him into one of the cars. As they set off, he said quietly but firmly to the plainclothes man next to him, ‘I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused, but will you please phone my GP and ask him to go and see my fiancée? She’s very ill.’

  The plainclothes man said after a pause, ‘And where is your fiancée?’

  ‘At 22, Laurel Gardens. I was trying to get to her. Please, she’s very ill.’

  The man stared at him a moment before putting the call through to the station.

  11

  They left him in a room with a police constable and an equally silent cup of machine coffee, all part of the softening up process, he assumed. After about half an hour, he demanded to know what was being done about Frances. The constable passed the question on and the answer came back that Dr Parker had been called. Fraser had already been asked if he wanted legal advice and had spoken to the only firm of solicitors he knew, the one that had handled his house conveyance.

  After another thirty minutes or so, the door opened and Lyn Harvey came in, accompanied by a tall, rather good-looking woman of about Fraser’s age.

  ‘Your GP, Dr Parker, has seen your fiancée and says to tell you that there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Fraser.

  ‘This is Mrs Croft, the solicitor you requested.’

  ‘Agnes Croft.’ She held out her hand to Fraser. It was cool and soft. She turned to Lyn. ‘Perhaps we could be left alone, Inspector.’

  Over the next two hours, she took notes and asked questions while Fraser told her everything he could think of, up to his faux pas that morning.

  ‘I’ve been kicking myself ever since,’ he said.

  ‘And so you should,’ she said. ‘Striking a police officer is just about the worst crime there is in their book – and it’s given them more authority over you than they’d have otherwise had.’ She sighed. ‘Oh well, from the sound of things, they were going to arrest you anyway. Let’s find out what they’ve got.’ She stood up. ‘Remember, pause before you answer each qu
estion in case I tell you not to answer it.’

  They were taken down to a windowless room with recording equipment on a table against the wall. Fraser sat with Lyn Harvey opposite him and a tall, soldierly man with a moustache adjacent to them both. Agnes Croft sat as near as she could to Fraser.

  Lyn tested the equipment, then named those present. The tall man was Superintendent Garrett.

  ‘Dr Callan, you told me yesterday that your relationship with Dr Flint – and I quote – “wasn’t very good”. That was something of an understatement, wasn’t it?’

  Fraser said after a pause, ‘As a professional person, that was how I saw it and wished to describe it.’

  ‘I see. Could you tell us how, and why, your relationship with her came to deteriorate so much – over the last two years, shall we say? As you saw it,’ she added, with the merest touch of irony.

  Once again, Fraser described his dispute with Connie over Alkovin, trying to present it as dispassionately as possible.

  ‘So in effect,’ Lyn said when he’d finished, ‘she exiled you to America for three months?’

  ‘If you care to put it like that, yes. It turned out to be quite a useful experience,’ he added.

  ‘One witness has told us that Dr Flint described it as a cooling-off period, your last chance, and gave you the option of accepting it or facing dismissal.’

  Thanks, Ian…

  ‘Well, Dr Callan?’

  ‘In essence, that’s true.’

  ‘This witness also said that a state of open warfare existed between you and Dr Flint.’

  ‘That is an exaggeration.’

  ‘Is it? The people we’ve spoken to at your workplace all agree that the relationship between you was appalling.’

  ‘As I told you yesterday, it wasn’t very good. Open warfare is an exaggeration.’

  After a slight pause, Lyn continued, ‘You returned from America on Friday, 7th May to discover that your fiancée, Frances Templeton, had leukaemia and was being treated by Dr Flint?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It must have come as a shock?’

  ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘Your fiancée knew about her condition several days before your return, and yet she chose not to tell you about it. Why was that, d’you think?’

  Agnes came in quickly. ‘Don’t answer that for the moment, Fraser.’

  Lyn continued as though the interruption hadn’t taken place. ‘You’re very worried about your fiancée, aren’t you, Dr Callan?’

  ‘You know I am. She’s now suffering from clinical depression and her mother phoned me this morning to tell me she was having a fit – that’s why I tried to get away from your officers.’ He thought he might as well get it in while he could.

  ‘You must have been horrified when you discovered on your return that Dr Flint was treating her with Alkovin?’

  ‘I wasn’t pleased.’

  ‘More understatement?’

  Fraser didn’t reply and Lyn went on, ‘On Saturday, 8th May, after visiting your fiancée in hospital, you went to see Dr Flint in her office, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where you threatened her.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘You didn’t threaten her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have a witness who overheard your conversation with her.’ She extracted a sheet of paper and read from it… ‘Dr Flint said, “Are you threatening me, Fraser?” and Dr Callan answered, “Yes, I am threatening you.”’

  Thank you, Terry, Fraser thought, then said, ‘That has been taken out of context.’

  ‘Really? The statement continues: Dr Flint said, “All you have to threaten me with is violence,” and then, “Would you kill me, Fraser?” Dr Callan replied, “If anything happened to Frances, then I would kill you.”’ Lyn looked up. ‘And something did happen to Frances, didn’t it? The very thing you’d feared – she developed clinical depression. Didn’t she, Dr Callan?’

  Agnes said, ‘We seem to be straying into rather esoteric areas. I request a break to talk with my client.’

  Garrett said, ‘You had plenty of time to talk to your client earlier, Mrs Croft. We’ve been going for less than an hour and I think we should hear Dr Callan’s answer to DI Harvey’s question. We’ll break before long.’

  Lyn said, ‘Frances developed clinical depression, didn’t she, Dr Callan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have found it very upsetting?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘And it made you angry?’

  Fraser glanced at Agnes, who nodded. He said, ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘And on Friday, 2nd July, after Frances had been diagnosed with clinical depression, you went and – er – had it out with Dr Flint?’

  ‘I conveyed my feelings to her, yes.’

  ‘A witness describes hearing a scream from Dr Flint’s room and the words “Help, he’s assaulting me,” and upon investigation, found her in a distraught state. She had bruising to the wrists, while you had slap marks on both sides of your face.’

  ‘She did slap me,’ said Fraser, ‘which is why I held her wrists – to prevent her doing it again.’

  ‘Why did she slap you, Dr Callan?’

  Another nod from Agnes.

  ‘She told me I needed counselling because of my relationship with Frances and I told her that she was in no position to judge other people’s relationships.’

  Lyn said disbelievingly, ‘She slapped you for that?’

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t add that she’d also kneed his balls.

  ‘I see. So then she accused you of assault and called in the police, since when you’ve been suspended pending enquiry?’

  ‘That’s true, but—’

  ‘Effectively, that’s the end of your career, isn’t it, Dr Callan? I think we’ll take a break now,’ she said before Fraser could reply.

  *

  ‘She’s twisting everything around to make it look as bad as possible.’

  ‘Of course she is,’ Agnes said. ‘That’s her job. The advantage from our point of view is that it tells us what kind of case they’re trying to build. Tell me again about the so-called threat you made to Dr Flint – everything you can remember.’

  Fraser did so. Agnes continued:

  ‘This man Stroud, does he have any grudge against you?’

  ‘He might have,’ Fraser said, and told her how JS had asked him to look into the laboratory and how he’d then seriously considered retiring Terry. ‘I can’t swear that Terry knew about it, but I’m as sure as I can be that he did.’

  ‘All right. Now tell me again about the last row, the so-called assault.’

  Once again, Fraser did so.

  ‘I think you were right not to mention the knee to the groin,’ Agnes said. ‘Forget it for now.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Let’s see what Act Two brings.’

  *

  This time, Garrett opened the questioning, asking Fraser to describe again the events after Connie had phoned him. His voice was surprisingly soft and, to Fraser, the more menacing for that.

  After he’d finished, Garrett said, ‘The stick you found on the steps – was it lying across the steps, or flat on one of them?’

  Fraser thought. ‘Flat, I think.’

  ‘What made you pick it up?’

  ‘It looked untidy, I assumed someone had dropped it.’

  ‘And you noticed nothing strange about it?’

  ‘Not at the time, no.’

  ‘The knobbed end was quite heavily bloodstained.’

  ‘Yes, I realised that later, but I didn’t notice it at the time.’

  ‘You told us how you pushed the door open – is that something you usually do when calling on people?’

  ‘No, but there was no reply to my ringing and I noticed it was ajar, so I—’

  ‘A lot ajar, or a little?’

  ‘A little. I pushed it open and—’

  ‘Still holding the stick?’

  ‘Yes. I cal
led out and then saw Dr Flint lying there…’

  ‘What did you do with the stick then?’

  ‘I – I put it down when I tried to see if there was anything I could do for her.’

  ‘Put it down where?’

  ‘On the floor…’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure about that.’

  ‘I was more concerned about Dr Flint than the stick.’

  ‘You see, Dr Callan, Mr Farleigh has told us that you were still holding the stick when he found you with Dr Flint’s—’

  ‘Then he’s a bloody liar!’ Fraser shouted.

  Agnes leaned forward, touched his arm in warning. He swallowed, said, ‘I want to tell you something about Leo Farleigh, Superintendent – if anyone killed Connie, then it was him, he had a lot more motive than me.’

  ‘Tell us about Mr Farleigh’s motive, Dr Callan.’

  Fraser, knowing he hadn’t introduced the subject at the best time or in the best way, glanced at Agnes again before telling them about Connie’s call to him, how she’d said she was worried about the “others”… ‘She could only have meant Leo and Ian Saunders, that they’d have tried to prevent her changing her mind about Alkovin.’

  ‘How could they have known she’d changed her mind?’

  ‘She must have told them – I asked Leo when he arrived if she’d phoned him and he said yes.’

  ‘He’d just found you crouched beside a dead body with a stick in your hand, Dr Callan. He wasn’t going to disagree with you about anything.’

  ‘Are you saying she didn’t phone him?’

  ‘BT have a record of her call to you, but no record of her calling Mr Farleigh.’

  ‘Well, if you know she called me, then why—’

  ‘We know she called you, but not what she said. We have only your word for that, Dr Callan.’

  There was a silence while Fraser absorbed this, then Garrett said, ‘Let’s get back to Mr Farleigh for a moment, doctor. I believe you had an – er – altercation with him quite recently, on Tuesday, 15th June, in fact?’

  ‘We had words, yes.’

  ‘He says you nearly throttled him when he tried to commiserate with you about Miss Templeton.’

  Fraser took a breath and told him what had happened. ‘He was trying to score points, Superintendent, that’s why I lost my temper. It was wrong of me, I know, but I was short of sleep.’