Deadly Diagnosis

by Mairi Chong

  Cathy laughed. ‘I’ll tell you about that another time,’ she said, and much to Suzalinna’s obvious indignation, she said good night.

  Cathy found herself drinking another glass of wine. She was unwilling to go to bed, despite the obvious safety of her own house, and the comfort that Suzalinna’s chatter had given her. Instead, she sat up long into the night, looking at the electric fire. It wasn’t until her cat jumped on her knee and kneaded at her jumper, that she remembered the mark on the grass. The outline of a box of some sort. Not heavy though, but enough to flatten the grass.

  ‘Clever,’ Cathy said to herself. ‘The perfect excuse to lure her there.’

  But Cathy felt strongly still that she had neglected the original crime. Fernibanks did seem to be central in all of this. Was the doctor who perished lured to his death also, just as Betty had been? A perverted man, certainly in his scientific thinking but also, it seemed, in his relations with women. It seemed not impossible to imagine the dreadful man being induced to meet someone, a female, in one of the deserted buildings. Neil had proposed that the perpetrator had been Betty herself. The righteous matron. Had she known about the awful experiments on his patients? Had she asked him there, intending to kill him? Was that why she had been killed all these years later? Did someone want to avenge the man’s death having had the incident brought up again by Neil and his insensitive anecdote?

  Cathy thought of Betty. When she had come asking for help, she had assumed that she was the real victim. How differently things now looked though, if one considered Betty as a killer first. Was she afraid that with only limited remaining days, she might be outed? Had she come to Cathy for protection, hoping to swerve the retribution for her ancient crime? Cathy thought again of the blood she had seen on the grass verge and sighed. No one deserved that end, no matter what they had done. The old woman had been terminally ill already. Killed with a blow to the head first and then, to add insult to injury, she had been left lying in the path of a train. Cathy shivered. Why had the killer done that?

  33

  By morning, she was no longer afraid, but instead felt an aching sense of foreboding. Cathy decided that as far as relations with Alex went, there would be no more. How could she contemplate even communicating with a man she didn’t trust? He had lied to her from the word go, and now, she could only hope that her investigation would not lead her back to his door. But despite the surprising sense of disappointment that this decision brought, she felt that she must not allow her better judgement to be clouded. Granted, Alex was definitely in the frame, but she really must look into the other volunteers also, just as Suzalinna had suggested.

  The afternoon had been allotted to booked-in patients and paperwork. It was true that she had neglected the practice a good deal these past few weeks, but despite this, she felt that she must put her admin time to use and continue the investigation.

  It was unfortunate that she didn’t know the surnames of the two ladies in question. Tricia and Carol were very ordinary names after all, and within their age-bracket also, they were hardly unusual. Cathy walked through to the front desk.

  ‘Have you got a minute, Michelle? I’m trying to do a bit of fundraising for the charity shop tombola in a couple of weeks. Can we put a couple of these things up? Carol, one of the volunteers gave me it.’ Cathy held up a poster. ‘I’ll be collecting prizes for the thing too. Goodness knows how I got roped in.’

  Michelle giggled. ‘We’ll put it up on the notice board Dr Moreland if you leave it there.’

  ‘They’re a funny bunch of women,’ Cathy said. ‘Are any of them ours, do you know? I thought I recognised a face perhaps.’

  ‘Patricia Bonnar? Is that maybe who you mean? She’s been on our list for years. Sees Dr Longmuir, I think. Bit of a frumpy, old sourpuss. Well, that’s my impression. Typical charity shop material though. Do-gooder but needy, if you get me? I can’t remember what she comes into Dr Longmuir for. You’d need to ask him, or look her up.’

  Cathy nodded. ‘Do you know about the other one? I think she’s called Carol. She’s the one in charge and who all my dealings have been with.’

  Michelle shook her head. ‘I don’t know her, no. Perhaps Dr Longmuir might? They do get a regular turnover of staff, I think. I walked past the other week and saw a new one rearranging something in the window.’

  Cathy thanked her. As she passed James’s room returning to her own, she heard his voice speaking reassuringly. She’d wait until he had finished with his patient and then ask. Sitting down, she typed in the name: ‘Patricia Bonnar.’ There was only one match. With a couple of clicks of the mouse, Cathy was looking at the fifty-six-year-old woman’s notes. It seemed that the lady was a regular, consulting James every two months or so. Cathy looked at her past prescriptions and was relieved to find that, although the woman was on an antidepressant, it was not a tricyclic. James had prescribed one of the newer kinds, which would certainly not have caused any serious ill-effects at a high dose, such as the one that had poisoned the girl Holly. It seemed, then, that Tricia was out of the frame for now. That of course, left Carol, who Cathy still couldn’t pin down with a surname. Cathy waited a frustrating fifteen minutes until at last James’s door was opened and she heard him saying goodbye to his patient. Before her partner had a chance to call in the next, Cathy nipped into his room.

  ‘James,’ she said.

  Her senior partner looked up in surprise. ‘What are you up to Cathy?’ he asked.

  ‘I need information,’ she said bluntly. ‘The charity shop …’

  At this, James rolled his eyes.

  ‘No, give me a chance, James,’ she pleaded. ‘I’ve just been looking at Patricia Bonnar’s notes …’

  ‘Cathy,’ he said, warningly. ‘You’re on shaky ground. You know all accesses to notes are logged and auditable. Code of conduct? It’s unethical to be raking through the files unless it’s for a medical purpose.’

  Cathy shook her head in annoyance. ‘James, are you for real? Honestly, I am doing it for medical reasons, I’m protecting the community. If you hadn’t noticed, a patient of ours was murdered the other week, and another two people have been hospitalised since. Something very nasty is happening in Glainkirk and I’m struggling to sleep easy knowing that we might be sitting next to a murderer day-in-day-out.’

  ‘It makes me very uncomfortable, Cathy, you looking through the notes, that’s all I’m saying. I agree that you needed to look at Thomas Hogg’s because the police were due to come in anyway, but anything else is overstepping the mark. We pledged to uphold the code –’

  Cathy raised a hand. ‘Alright James, have it your way. I’ll not look at anything. I’ll not ask you about it either.’

  She left the room and returned to her own, furious at James, but more so at herself for having been so thoughtless. He was of course, quite right. Since Betty’s death, she had made a number of poor decisions. She wondered what James would say if he knew about last night’s escapades, breaking and entering into someone’s flat. Cathy brooded on it for some time, but eventually, she snatched up the phone. The call was short but she gained the information that she needed. She was about to put a call through to the hospital to enquire about the condition of Thomas Hogg and Holly, but impulsively, she replaced the phone and instead marched to the front desk.

  ‘I’m heading out,’ she told Michelle and jogged from the building into the rain.

  ‘We’ve needed to talk for some time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been biding my time and waiting. I knew that the answer must lie with you.’

  Holly, pale and thin, stared back at her blankly. Her hair lay lank across the pillow in a knotted cascade. Her fringe fell over her eyes and the girl, too weak to raise a hand, blew at it with the corner of her mouth. The rest of the hospital ward continued around the two women, but Cathy was oblivious.

  ‘I didn’t know how long you’d take to wake up,’ she confessed. ‘Last night, I’m ashamed to admit, I was in your flat.’ There was a flash of intere
st from the girl’s eyes and Cathy shrugged and laughed. ‘Hardly the kind of behaviour you’d expect from a GP, but then I suppose we’re not that dissimilar, are we Holly?’

  The younger woman stared back at her but didn’t speak.

  ‘I saw the textbooks. The notes.’

  It was the first time the girl spoke and her voice was low. ‘I’ve quit.’

  Cathy smiled at this and shook her head. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. She had seen the pages of revision by the girl’s bedside table. If she was done with her medical degree, then she had a funny way of showing it.

  ‘How about I speak and you can jump in and correct me?’ When the girl didn’t answer, she took it as her assent. ‘You came to Glainkirk for a reason, that’s clear. I knew that you were smart as soon as I set eyes on you, but troubled by something, that was obvious.’ The girl sneered but Cathy continued. ‘I think you joined the charity shop, as much to keep yourself busy as anything else. You’ve been working all through your school days and then at university. I doubt that you’d find it easy to suddenly stop and do nothing. I don’t know if you saw the shop as a route to the answers you so desperately wanted. Perhaps, it just turned out to be that way. I called a colleague of mine up at the medical school in Aberdeen. You left after failing your anatomy exam. You hadn’t told them about the extenuating circumstances for failing though. I believe your mother was eventually contacted by the deanery when you didn’t show for the re-sit.’

  ‘She’s not my mother.’

  ‘Yes. I heard about that too. Your family have been concerned. The medical school have worried also.’

  The girl’s cheeks reddened. She stared angrily at Cathy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Your father, or the man who brought you up as his own, died only a few months ago. Your family hadn’t told you before, and I suppose that during the trauma of his unexpected death, a heart attack, I believe, you discovered something that you were never meant to know.’ Cathy paused and looked at the girl, who if anything, seemed to grow smaller and more fragile.

  ‘Papers,’ Holly said in almost a whisper. ‘Then I forced my mother to speak.’

  ‘You found out that you were adopted, didn’t you? I’m sorry. I saw the birth certificate. It was lying beside your computer. Not much to go on. A common-enough first name for your birth mother, and a place: Fernibanks, Glainkirk. Neither your adoptive mother nor father had ever suggested that it might be the case. You had been an unusually clever child, out-performing the entire family, so I hear. The first to go to university, I believe. Certainly, the first to study medicine. Perhaps you never felt you fitted in? Medical school was meant to be where you blossomed, but then your adoptive father died and it was all too much.’

  ‘They hate me. I’m not like them,’ the girl said, and Cathy might have laughed if the situation had not been so serious, for the girl sounded so young.

  ‘No, they don’t hate you at all. Your family are incredibly proud, but you are different. You don’t think like them. You are a very intelligent person, from what I hear. The university sees great potential in you. You can be a bit fierce and volatile at times. The alcohol hasn’t helped, I suppose.’

  A smile flickered on the girl’s lips. ‘That’s the only good thing about being unconscious. I’ve done cold turkey without even noticing it.’

  ‘You saw from the papers, that your birth mother was from Glainkirk. That’s why you came, am I right?’ Cathy continued.

  Holly nodded. ‘Yes. I didn’t have much to go on, other than where I was left and the name.’

  Cathy leaned back in her chair. ‘Fernibanks and Elizabeth. Yes, I can see why you made the jump. The name, the place and, of course, the date seemed right too. I don’t suppose you ever asked Betty?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘She wasn’t really that sort of a person. She wouldn’t have hugged me and told me she was sorry. I was going to speak to her though. I’d made up my mind to do it.’

  ‘But then, she was murdered.’

  ‘Oh, you know as well as I do that it was Alex,’ the girl said angrily. ‘He used to be a policeman. He was sacked for misconduct. I found that out looking it up and matching the dates. He was the one who poisoned me too. He knew how to frame Thomas, and when he was shouting that he’d seen who had killed Betty, he ran him over.’

  ‘His car’s being fixed in the garage,’ Cathy said distractedly.

  ‘There you go,’ Holly said. ‘He’s the one. I suppose Betty found out the truth about him too and didn’t like him working in the shop or something. The nurses told me I was poisoned with a tricyclic antidepressant. I did do some reading at medical school and I know that they aren’t just used for low mood.’

  ‘Neuropathic pain,’ Cathy said.

  ‘Exactly. I know you fancy him, and all that. I’m very happy for you but ... Who’s the only person with a gammy leg, after all? It has to be Alex.’

  Cathy nodded sadly.

  ‘What did you mean about numbers, by the way?’ Cathy suddenly asked. She had forgotten all about the first piece of paper she had found in Holly’s flat.

  Holly screwed up her nose. ‘Stupid idea really. Thomas has an obsession with numbers and times. It’s been going on for years according to Marie. I just thought it odd and wondered where it started. The night before he was run over, he arrived at my door saying he thought he was going to die, that he’d seen a number, and that everyone had a warning or a time when they were going to die.’

  The girl looked utterly exhausted and they sat for some time in silence before Cathy left her to sleep. There was only one thing for it. She felt she really must check there and then.

  It took around twenty minutes to get to the bottom of things. Having left the orthopaedics ward, Cathy was still unsure how the new piece of information might fit. Thomas had been reluctant to share with her his prize possession. After all, he told her he had kept it near enough twenty years, carried it for safety in his bag everywhere he went. Cathy promised she’d take great care of it. One thing was for sure anyway, she needed to clear up a suspicion. It had to be done, whether she liked it or not.

  Sally, her old friend from medical school, answered on the third ring. She was delighted, if a little surprised, to hear from her so rapidly after the reunion. Cathy wished she had called her far sooner though. It might have put an end to all of this a long time ago.

  ‘Oh no, Cathy. I’m delighted to hear from you, but you’ve got your facts quite wrong. Oh dear, what a muddle, but how nice you’ve met up with each other. Alex did retire legitimately. It was during a car chase that he was injured. The other officer who he was with at the time though, went a bit overboard. I think he was too rough with the person they arrested. Alex was caught up in the whole thing. I think he had to testify against his colleague. We were barely functioning as a couple at that point, and it was the final nail in the coffin. He was depressed and drinking too much when he had to stop work. He had a family history of depression. His mother I think was quite bad. I’m glad he’s moved on though, and back to Glainkirk too, how funny. Send him my love if you see him again. I’m so glad I went to that reunion, Cathy. To meet up with you again, and Suzalinna.’

  Cathy agreed that they must keep in touch. When she hung up, something that Sally had said, struck a chord. She quickly called the practice and asked if James was free.

  When she spoke to him, he was a little annoyed at her request, but he did agree if it would put an end to all of this nonsense.

  ‘You’re making yourself sick, I’ve warned you,’ he said before hanging up. ‘You've got a duty to your patients to stay healthy. Doctors can’t be unwell. It affects too many people.’

  34

  Three days later, and a Saturday, Shirley’s, the dreadful café on the Glainkirk high street, was thankfully quiet. The girls, who had served Thomas and Holly the week or so before, had reserved the largest table by the half-frosted, glass window at the front. Holly had already positioned herself next to a heater on the wa
ll, and from there, she was able to watch the customers coming and going. She still wasn’t quite her normal self and had lost a good deal of weight since her hospital admission, but with follow-ups to check her kidney function, she had been told she was going to be fine.

  It didn’t surprise her in the least to see Thomas’s arch-enemy Carbolic, sitting at a small circular table in the far corner of the café. The man looked sulky and shambolic. It seemed strange that he had a habit of turning up where he wasn’t wanted, or supposed to be. But Holly guessed that this completed the group in a way, with only Thomas, the single absentee from proceedings.

  Carol and Tricia pitched up first. Like a pair of silly school-girls, they entered the café, giggling, carrying on, fussing over removing their many layers. Placing their felted jackets over the backs of the chairs, they then repeatedly dropped gloves, scarves, hats and whatever else they carried, under the table.

  Holly thought that they were all a little uncertain of one another in these most unusual circumstances. Being outwith their normal environment of the shop did feel rather strange. Carol raised a hand in greeting to Carbolic who must have been watching in incredulity as more and more members of the charity shop staff arrived. Not long after, Alex and Neil walked in.

  Holly wasn’t sure if one of them had driven to the place. Perhaps Alex’s car had been fixed by now. At any rate, when they arrived, the men were less wrapped up than the ladies. This did not go unnoticed and there was much jocularity from Neil about the weaker sex. Fortunately, it seemed that Holly was left entirely out of this crass generalisation. It was just as well because she was in the frame of mind to shoot Neil down pretty quickly if he started up any of his drivel. He did, however, give her a wink, and say that it was nice to see her up and about again. As it happened, they all acted as if Holly’s stay in hospital had been an embarrassing mistake; something that no one dared address.