Don't Wake Up

by Liz Lawler

  ‘My daughter is accused of a double murder. Now that may not mean much to you, you being a police officer, but she’s my daughter and I know she’s innocent, and so while you carry on trying to prove otherwise all I need is a few moments sitting in her place. They had her sedated up at the hospital, so I couldn’t talk to her . . . I just need to feel near her.’

  The anguish in the man’s eyes grew and Greg made a decision. He might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. He was already expecting a call from the superintendent over his misconduct with Laura. He pulled out a second pair of shoe covers and handed him a pair of gloves. ‘Don’t touch anything, and stay in my sight.’

  The two men stepped into the flat and took in the quiet and ordered surroundings. It was nearly as immaculate as the last time Greg had visited. Not a shoe on the floor, or a newspaper discarded on the table, or a cushion out of place. If the other rooms were like this it was no wonder the officers had come and gone so quickly. It would have been an easy search.

  The only thing marring the tidiness was the large painting partially unwrapped and resting on bubble wrap on one of the leather sofas. A slim cardboard box was leaning next to it. The painting showed a naked woman lying in a bed, her breasts bare and her hands tugging a red scarf, which was held in the hand of the man exiting the room, as if to pull him back to her. The colours were big and bold and bright. Alex’s father hunched down and inspected it closely. Then he spoke: ‘It is no new thing for the best of men to be falsely accused of the worst crime, by those who themselves are the worst of criminals.’

  Greg didn’t have a clue what he was on about. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Genesis, chapter 39.’

  Greg was surprised. ‘Are you a religious man, Mr Taylor?’

  ‘No. Merely interested in art. This is a modern version of Potiphar’s Wife. There are several versions, but they all tell the same story.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘A powerful woman accuses her slave of rape. Joseph was a loyal slave and his master’s wife tried to entice him into her bed. When he refused she told her husband that he had raped her and Joseph was put in prison.’

  Greg stared at the painting some more, and then acting on instinct, he called Nathan Bell. He was in luck when the receptionist said he’d just come on duty. As soon as the man said hello, Greg cut in. ‘Nathan. It’s Greg Turner. The night you came to see Alex, was there a painting on one of the sofas?’

  The doctor sounded remote, but his answer was immediate. ‘Yes, she’d just received it, by the look of things. It was half unwrapped. Why?’

  ‘Did she say if she’d bought it or where she got it from?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. Why? Is it important?’

  Greg didn’t know. All he knew was the story behind the painting was making him uneasy. Why would she buy herself a painting like this, especially in view of what she had accused Oliver Ryan of?

  He heard an intake of breath on the end of the line and then Nathan Bell spoke again. ‘It was a present! I asked her if it was from her old boyfriend and she said no. But it was a present – she told me it was.’

  Alex Taylor’s father was staring at him with hope in his eyes, but Greg wasn’t yet ready to give him any. Aware that the man was listening, he spoke carefully to Nathan Bell. ‘You remember the hospital underground we didn’t get to explore?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Will you meet me there?’

  ‘Yes. Give me an hour to sort out some cover and then meet me here.’

  Greg turned to Alex Taylor’s father. ‘I must ask you to leave now as I have to head back to the station.’

  The man nodded. ‘I don’t care where you’re going as long as you’re going in the right direction.’

  Greg didn’t know if he was. This could just be a blind alley and he could be building up hope only to have it suddenly come crashing down again. There was probably not the slightest chance of finding anything, but he had to try.

  On the way out of the flat he gave instructions to the PC to ring the art gallery who sent the painting and find out who had purchased it, and then to contact him immediately.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  It was while Maggie was cooking that she realised her mistake. The thought of Christmas Day and the presents she had bought triggered the memory. She had left evidence that could tie her to Alex Taylor. If they searched Alex’s home and found the Christmas card she sent, even though she hadn’t signed it, they might deduce that the written message was about the painting.

  Simple mistakes like this could trip her up.

  Especially in view of how much she’d accomplished. The killing of Amy Abbott had been no easy feat. When she’d woken strapped down on a theatre table the idea to kill her there and then was put on hold as a new idea began to form. To keep her alive would set in motion another way to destroy Alex Taylor. Keeping her alive for several days had been the real challenge. When her screams got too loud, Maggie had taped her mouth. Not for fear of her being heard, but the noise had been driving her mad.

  In the end she’d become delirious, and with death imminent it had been easy to dispose of her in the hospital grounds. In her wildest dreams Maggie could not have foreseen that the nurse would still be able to talk. When she whispered, ‘You said you’d help me,’ she had of course been directing those last words to Maggie.

  Now this memory was spoiled, the outcome no longer satisfying. She had ruined it by trying to be too clever. She had wanted Alex to live, to be destroyed. Now she had to change the ending.

  The tomato sauce in the large pan began to bubble and she quickly lowered the heat. The pasta was ready, but she couldn’t eat it now. Her appetite had gone with the thought of what she must do. The fragrant red liquid bubbling away was too red and too thin to look like blood, but she thought of it as blood as she imagined Alex Taylor dead.

  Maggie wrung her hands in rage and frustration. Giving her the painting had been a mistake. She had wanted Alex to one day learn the meaning of the present, but now realised she had given the police evidence to question her.

  She could say Dr Taylor had fallen in love with her version and had all but begged Maggie to get her one. She had taken pity on the woman and had agreed. She had not mentioned it when questioned, because she saw no point. But it was a chance she was not prepared to take. Once they started looking into her, they would start questioning staff about her movements that night, and her alibi would start to unravel. Like the fact that she had taken over midway through an operation to deliver twins, because her junior registrar was unable to cope. When she was bleeped by switchboard to attend the emergency department, she had said she couldn’t, because she was in the middle of an operation. What she didn’t want known was that her whereabouts were unaccounted for during the first part of the operation. She had to act quickly before Alex Taylor was set free.

  Dylan moved close to the covered plate of pasta, chancing his luck to steal an exposed strand poking out from under the lid. Maggie watched the rat as its naked hands and long teeth gripped hold of the strand and dragged it away. Its round black eyes looked at her innocently, and while her feelings of hatred for Alex Taylor grew like a giant fist inside, she forgot that she quite loved the brown rat. Without hesitation she picked up the large pot of boiling red liquid and poured it all over him.

  The rat squealed and shook itself violently to shake off the burning liquid. Its bulbous eyes turned white, and blindly and in agony it could find no relief as it skidded repeatedly on the wet surface. Maggie’s heart was beating faster and the rat was squealing louder, and unable to think over the noise or turn away from the desperate creature she snatched it up and flung it hard against the kitchen wall. The rat fell to the floor and twitched for a few pitiful seconds, and then lay still.

  For the first time since Oliver died Maggie Fielding cried.

  ‘It’s all their fault, Maggs,’ he’d said, naming each of them. ‘All their fault that I lost the part.’

  He
had taken her out to dinner and told her that his agent had dropped him and that he had lost the best part he was ever likely to have. None of it was his fault, he explained. These women targeted him.

  Under the influence of alcohol and the reassurances she gave that he was not to blame, he told her about Alex Taylor. He told how the woman led him on all day and then rejected him. ‘I’m a man, Maggs, not a saint. What was I to do? It was her fault that I went with a stupid tart. If she hadn’t got me all fired up I wouldn’t have needed to. It was only a release, Maggs. I just needed a release.’

  Maggie refrained from asking him why he had gone back to Bath six months ago to seek release with yet another woman, this time leaving his seed behind. She’d found out about the nurse from the text messages he’d received. It was easy enough to track her down once Maggie moved to Bath.

  She also refrained from telling him that she had been aware for some time of his need for other women – the pink business card she’d found, Unwind with Lillian, advertising the woman selling her wares.

  ‘It was all their fault, Maggs,’ he repeated again and again throughout the evening, and Maggie had wanted to believe him, until she went back to his place. Until he told her of his plans.

  Nathan Bell wore a tailored jacket over his green A & E tunic and trousers. He and Greg both carried torches because the overhead fluorescent strip lights along the hundred-foot corridor were dim, their encasements coated with dirt, and barely lit the way.

  They were standing roughly beneath the main theatre block, and Nathan pointed out the old disused lift shaft that used to carry staff and equipment down to the underground area. On the first and second floor above them the lift shaft had been walled up, and most people had no knowledge of its existence behind the plaster.

  They looked in the lift and saw it was stacked with old bedside lockers, a couple of geriatric armchairs and a dismantled, old-style hospital bed with a brown rubber mattress. The disused lift had been used as a dumping site.

  Miles of cable and pipes were attached to the low ceiling. Batting aside cobwebs and passing more abandoned equipment, they continued their search. The fragile hope Greg had felt earlier upon entering the underground area was diminishing fast. They hadn’t found anywhere so far that resembled a theatre, and he wished he’d thought to ask Nathan to bring the floor plans.

  At the end of the second corridor they reached a junction. Greg gave a nod to Nathan indicating that he would take the left. Ten minutes later they had returned to the junction and slowly and despondently headed back the way they had come. Their search was over, and unsuccessful.

  ‘You know, if Alex is telling the truth, the real killer would have had to know about these underground corridors. And if Maggie Fielding is the killer, she must have had an accomplice. There’s no way she could have carried Alex down here by herself,’ Nathan commented.

  ‘I was thinking nearly the same,’ Greg answered, trying to imagine a woman carrying another person this far by herself. He suspected that it was highly unlikely that he and Nathan would come across this mysterious theatre, and that maybe there was no such place to be found.

  Greg wondered about the painting. Could it have come from Oliver Ryan? He was dead. It was possible of course that before he died he’d arranged for it to be sent to her as a Christmas present. A taunt, perhaps? Or maybe it was one of the dead women who had sent it? Maybe these women were dead because Alex Taylor had been in love with Oliver Ryan. Oliver Ryan—

  He stopped dead. He remembered where he’d met Oliver Ryan before. He remembered the restaurant manager apologising to him for allowing the woman to disturb him. He remembered him trying to hide behind a menu, and at the time thought it was because he was embarrassed. But Oliver Ryan had been trying to hide his face because he thought he would be recognised, because his unwelcome visitor had been Lillian Armstrong – a woman that, in public, he clearly didn’t want to be associated with. Especially as Lillian Armstrong – while telling everyone to piss off – had said she’d been invited.

  At the time Greg hadn’t believed her, but now he thought that maybe she had been invited. Maybe Oliver Ryan hadn’t actually invited her into the hotel’s restaurant, maybe it was only to his bedroom.

  ‘We need to find proof that Dr Fielding was involved,’ Nathan said.

  Greg shook his head. ‘We need to find proof that Alex is innocent. Otherwise it’s game over.’

  It was by sheer chance that he saw the outline of a door behind an upright bed base. His torch had glanced off it and he saw a metal plate on the wall. On closer inspection he saw the metal plate was attached to a door, a place where once a handle had been secured. Putting down his torch he moved the bed base to one side, and then prised the door open using his fingertips.

  Both men shone their torches inside. Sweeping the floor, the ceiling and the walls they could see the place was approximately twenty-foot square. Against one wall four rusty oxygen cylinders were stacked and chained. A low metal stool and a folded wheelchair were over by another. A tall bulky object was covered by cloudy old polythene. In the centre of the room was the one thing they had been searching for – an operating table.

  ‘It’s an Eschmann table,’ Nathan said. ‘We don’t use them any more. It’s probably been down here for years.’ He walked over to the polythene and dragged it off to reveal an outdated-looking operating lamp, nearly as tall as Nathan. Its adjustable arm bent over like a giraffe’s neck, supporting a wide glass plate that would light up when switched on. If the arm was raised it would stand several feet taller. ‘Nor this, the glare was too stressful on the surgeons’ eyes. And there,’ he said, shining the torch on the wheelchair, ‘is Maggie Fielding’s accomplice. She could have done it. Alex was telling the truth, Greg. This is where she must have been taken.’

  Greg’s eyes revealed his scepticism. The man was clutching at straws. They had found an old operating table and a wheelchair, and Nathan Bell was jumping to conclusions in his desperation to prove Alex innocent. Greg was not convinced by any of it. He looked intently around the room, searching for signs of recent activity, but there was nothing to indicate any. The air was cold and still. The floors clean. The operating table clean. The wheelchair— A shiver ran down his spine as he gazed back around the room. Both their jackets were covered in dust and cobwebs, and yet this place, which they had to prise their way into, was spotlessly clean. No dust. No cobwebs. And, to his astonishment, he realised there had been no previous search. Laura had said Sergeant McIntyre had conducted a thorough search, and he probably had. His objective was to find an operating room or a man dressed as a surgeon on the run. If they had been searching for a missing person then this location would not have been missed. According to Alex Taylor, she had been a missing person, not a fugitive.

  Greg tried to shut out this uncomfortable thought. He knew they still didn’t have enough yet to prove her innocent. They had to find more than this to back up Alex’s story. The CPS could argue that Alex had known of this place and elaborated her story to fit the evidence. They had to find evidence to prove she was innocent and that someone else was guilty. ‘You ever see that film, The Bone Collector?’

  Nathan shook his head.

  ‘Never mind,’ Greg said. ‘Just do as I tell you. We’re going to fingertip search every inch of the place by torchlight. We probably won’t find a thing, but we’ve got to at least try. Alex deserves that.’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Jakie Jackson, as he was known to everyone, including his wife, was standing up to stretch his legs when the fire alarm went off. The sound box was on the wall outside the cubicle, and the whooping sound was deafening. His prisoner shot bolt upright, clearly terrified, and was trying to throw the blankets off and get out of bed.

  Jakie saw how small and defenceless she was and felt sorry for her. He hadn’t liked sitting in the room for most of the day. It felt strange to be guarding a doctor, and the truth of it was that to his experienced eyes she just didn’t look like
a killer. He knew he was being daft. There was no blueprint of a killer’s face in any book. The stereotype of close-set-eyes and eyebrows that joined in the middle was just nonsense. A killer only looked like a killer when you knew they were one, and that’s where he had a problem. This slip of a girl didn’t look like one, even though he knew she was.

  Over the screeching alarm he shouted to be heard. ‘I’m just going to check if it’s for real.’ He held up a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Don’t! Please! I’ll stay here,’ Alex shouted back.

  Jakie Jackson hesitated. The doctor had yet to be officially arrested. His job was to guard her until DI Turner returned to do the deed. ‘It’ll only be for a minute.’

  ‘Please, it could be real and you may not be able to get back to me. Please. I’ll stay here. I’ll wait for you. But don’t leave me chained up.’

  ‘Just let me check. It won’t be real, and then I’ll be back.’

  The door burst open and a nurse frantically waved her hand at the police officer. ‘Can I grab you? I need help quickly. The fire’s real and I’ve got a patient trapped in a bathroom. Bloody door’s jammed.’

  Jakie Jackson did something he had never done in his thirty-four years on the force. He left his charge unguarded. ‘I’ll be back in a jiff.’

  From along the corridor Maggie watched the people darting past her, nurses and porters pushing patients to safety on trolleys and in wheelchairs. Doctors were still trying to give treatments along the way. On Christmas Eve the place was packed with people rushed in from accidents, fights and illnesses, and then there were the ones who were there because they had been unable to get appointments with GPs and just wanted to be better for the big day tomorrow.

  The tall burly police officer stood head and shoulders above most of them.

  It was Nathan who spotted it, but he didn’t need to explain what it was to Greg. Greg had seen plenty of needle caps on the ground before, in alleyways and on the floors of public toilets. The white plastic sheath was a protective cover for an injection needle.