‘This is a hell of a time to talk health politics,’ Gus said plaintively. ‘Ain’t I ever to get peace from you both? Come on, let’s sort ourselves out.’
A large man in a porter’s uniform, well supplied with bright brass buttons, was sitting in a sort of cubby hole by the main entrance, contemplating them with a severe look. Gus arranged his face into one of its most agreeable expressions and quirked his head at him.
‘Good morning, squire. And a very nice one too, ’n’t it?’
The porter, clearly mollified by Gus’s familiar accent, bent his head forwards in a lordly acknowledgement. ‘Very nice, sir. Now, can I be of help to you, gentlemen? Madam?’
‘I was just wondering,’ Gus said, standing with his hands in his trouser pockets so that the skirts of his light raincoat —which he had insisted on wearing in spite of the continuing blazing hot weather — bunched out behind him. ‘I got this mate, told me about a club they’ve got here. Um, the SDAW Club.’
The porter looked at him and then slowly opened his mouth. There was a glint of silver tooth and then a faint rumble from deep inside him. He was chuckling. ‘Did he indeed? You got some interesting mates, then, mister. If he’s a member, that is, this friend of yours.’
‘I got the impression he was,’ Gus said, jovial now as he leaned confidingly against the side of the little cubby hole. DC Hagerty hovered behind him and George stood a little back, just watching. Gus in action was always a delight to see.
‘Well, now, was he suggesting you ought to be a member ’n’ all?’ the porter asked, his grin now much more pronounced. He was clearly enjoying this conversation.
‘Funny you should say that,’ Gus said admiringly. ‘How could you know? He did say as much. Now, why would that be?’
The porter let the chuckle become a throaty laugh. ‘On account of maybe you’re a bit too fond of the sauce, mister. Mind you, I’m not sayin’ that, I’m just saying that maybe your friend is suggestin’ that. Yes, bit too fond of the old sauce.’
Gus managed to look peeved. ‘Well, really, I don’t see as how that’s anyone’s business but mine. I like a drink as much as the next man, and I don’t deny I’ve had my noisy days, know what I mean? But to suggest I’m too fond, that really is a bit much, don’t you reckon?’
‘Not for me to say, mister. You asked me about the SDAW Club, and I’m just tellin’ you what I know of it. Which is not for public consumption, you understand.’ He laughed again. ‘Quite the reverse, in fact’
‘Hmm.’ Gus leaned a little closer. ‘Well, I made a deal with him that I’d come here and ask about this here club. He says I could do it a bit o’ good, seein’ I’ve got some funds at my disposal for givin’ away — being involved in charity work as I am from time to time. So I’d better do it. Can I talk to whoever runs this club then?’
The porter stopped laughing and looked watchful. ‘Didn’t your friend explain it to you?’
‘Not what you might call explain,’ Gus said. ‘He just said to come along and sort it all out.’
The porter sniffed sumptuously and at last got to his feet and emerged ponderously from his cubby hole. ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘I think this has gone far enough. It’s been a nice joke, but it’s far enough.’
‘Joke?’ Gus looked scandalized. ‘What do you mean, joke?’
‘Didn’t you never get sent for a long stand when you was in the army, mate? I imagine you was at some time, you look old enough to have done your national service.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Gus bitterly, who was not, and looking for the first time genuinely put out.
‘Well, when you was a junior at whatever job it is you do then. You send the lads to someone for a long stand and when they’ve been kept hanging around half an hour or so, the one they’re sent to says, ‘You tell your boss you’ve had a long enough stand for anyone, and get back to work.’ Well that’s ’ow it is now. The joke’s gone on long enough, and anyway’ — he made an effort to look menacing — ‘it’s not right to mock the afflicted, and while a joke’s a joke, it’s over now. On your way, friend.’
Gus looked at him for a long moment and then shook his head. ‘Well,’ he said conversationally. ‘I tried to do it the nice way.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out his warrant card. ‘Superintendent Hathaway, Ratcliffe Street. This is DC Hagerty and Dr Barnabas, police pathologist. We’d like to see whover looks after this club we’ve been talking about, if you please. And sharpish.’
The porter looked at the warrant card, then at Gus’s face, and then at Hagerty, who was also displaying his card. He blinked, opened his mouth and closed it again.
‘As soon as you like, squire,’ Gus said pleasantly, but with an edge to his voice. ‘Haven’t got all day, you know’
‘But there ain’t no club,’ the porter said. ‘Don’t you understand? You’ve bin sent on a wild goose wotsit. There ain’t no club. Only the ward.’
‘Try again,’ Gus invited. ‘Make me understand.’ He put away his card, but there remained an undertone of steel in his voice. ‘Fast.’
‘It’s the addiction ward ’ere.’ George bit her lip. AW. Addiction Ward. How stupid they had been not to see something so very obvious. Too obvious perhaps. The porter was still talking. ‘It’s where the boozers go to get dried out. Everyone knows that. We’ve ’ad some well-known people up there, very well known. But they don’t like outsiders knowing where they are, do they? So they gets their letters and that addressed to SDAW and then we know where to send stuff, but people outside don’t know they’re in a dry-out place. There ain’t no club as such, though I believe the patients get very matey up there. So when some geezer comes in ’ere asking for the SDAW Club, o’ course I see at once ’e’s bin set up by a mate. Stands to reason.’
Gus shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Not what I’d call reason, but I see what you mean. So, now, who do I talk to? Who will know about this club business?’
‘I keep telling you there ain’t no —’ the porter wailed.
‘Who do I talk to on this addiction ward then?’ Gus said sharply and the porter gave in.
‘Miss Chambers,’ he said sulkily. ‘If she’s there and o’ course I don’t know that, do I?’
‘Then find out,’ Gus snapped, pointing at the phone in the cubby hole. The porter sniffed with all the modest delicacy of an adenoidal elephant and, moving much like one too, turned and went back into the cubby hole and picked up the receiver.
It took some time and considerable forcefulness on Gus’s part to enable him to get across to whoever it was he spoke to on the telephone that this particular enquirer was not going to go away, and at length the porter cradled the phone and pointed across the hallway to the flight of handsome curving stairs.
‘The ward’s on the third floor,’ he said. ‘And,’ he added spitefully, ‘the lift’s not available to visitors, only patients.’
‘No problem,’ Gus said sunnily. ‘We enjoy the exercise. Thanks for your help, squire.’ And he was off, taking the stairs two at a time, with the others hurrying behind him.
The third floor was as well polished and handsome as the hall-way had been, and the two intervening floors too, and they stopped for a moment when they reached it, panting slightly and looking around.
A long corridor stretched away ahead of them, with doors on each side of it. Gus led the way along it, peering in at open doors as he reached them. They led to three-and four-bedded rooms for the most part, all of them with neatly made-up beds which were empty of people, though the oddments, cards and other litter lying around made it clear they were not unoccupied. Almost at the far end there was a closed door and Gus stopped outside it and listened. There was a faint buzz of voices, and after a slight hesitation he reached for the doorknob.
The voice that stopped him seemed to come immediately into George’s ear, and she jumped in surprise even more than Gus did.
‘Whatever you do, don’t interrupt them,’ the woman who had appeared behind George said. She soun
ded alarmed. ‘It takes long enough to get them started without you spoiling things. Now, I’m Sonia Chambers. You wanted to see me, I understand. Which one is Superintendent Hathaway?’ And she looked from one to the other accusingly.
She was a bulky woman, tall and well muscled, with rather faded red hair arranged in elaborate curls and waves and an impeccably made-up face. She seemed to be wearing a well-cut skirt and silk shirt under her white coat, which was short enough to show a considerable expanse of black stockinged legs. About fifty, George thought, pretending she’s still in her flighty thirties.
‘Good morning,’ Gus said smoothly. ‘I’m Superintendent Hathaway. This is DC Hagerty.’ There was more flashing of cards. ‘I’d appreciate a few words.’
‘So I understand,’ Miss Chambers snapped. ‘This way, if you please.’
She led them back along the corridor to another closed door, this time on the other side, opened it with a key attached to her waist by a long chain and held it open so that they could all file in ahead of her.
‘Well now, Miss Chambers,’ Gus said. He looked around for a chair, found one and immediately sat in it. DC Hagerty went and stood behind him and George, after a moment, closed the door behind Miss Chambers and leaned on it. Miss Chambers looked slightly alarmed, but controlled it well. She went to sit on the other chair behind the desk, crossing her legs as she did so to provide a goodly view of them. George had to admit they weren’t bad, but found the display irritating, though she wasn’t quite sure why.
‘Well?’ Miss Chambers said crisply. ‘What can I do for you?’
Gus set down in the middle of the desk the little buff card he had found among Tony Mendez’s things in the locker at Old East. ‘Tell me about that,’ he said.
She leaned over, looked at it but made no attempt to pick it up. ‘A joke,’ she said calmly after a while. ‘A sort of joke to gloss a service we offer here at St Dymphna’s.’
‘Perhaps you could explain the joke?’ Gus said.
‘Why? Where did you get the card from?’
‘I asked first,’ he said. ‘If you’re helpful now, you might get to ask questions later on. Maybe. So, the joke?’
She sighed and recrossed her legs. ‘It’s really very feeble. This ward is for the treatment of people with addictions. Alcohol mainly, but also recreational drugs. We get a number of well-known people who need their identities — um — protected, so we use the initials of the unit in all our dealings with patients and outside. Now, when they are stable, shall we say, and can function normally with adequate control of their alcohol intake, and are able to leave us, we don’t leave them. We make sure they have a lifeline back here. Each and every patient is given my mobile phone number so that in an emergency, at any time of day or night, someone is available to ensure they have someone to talk to. Not necessarily me. Sometimes I put them on to other people in the team — it depends on, well, whatever. Anyway, I make sure they can handle their crisis. That is what the card is about.’
‘Yes. That’s what you told me last night,’ Gus said, staring at the card. ‘But I’m still not entirely satisfied.’
Miss Chambers sat up more straight, uncrossing her legs and setting her feet firmly on the ground, for the first time forgetting what she might look like. ‘That was you who called last night?’
‘It was,’ Gus said and beamed. ‘But it’s this club bit that puzzles me. And what’s the joke? You still haven’t explained what’s funny.’
‘Oh.’ She threw up one hand in a gesture of irritation. ‘It’s silly. It’s just that we don’t enjoin total abstention from alcohol here. We teach social and controlled use of alcohol. So they — the patients — years ago came up with a different meaning for SDAW.’
‘Which is?’ he prompted.
There was a long pause, and Gus lifted his brows at her. She bit her lip. ‘Small drinks are wonderful,’ she said unwillingly at last.
Gus stared at her and then looked over his shoulder at George. ‘So he hadn’t been dry! Does that make the difference?’
‘I think it might,’ George said slowly and came forward. ‘It all depends on how much he was drinking. I know everyone at Old East thought he was dry. That was what was said about him. I think they all assumed AA.’
‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat,’ Sonia Chambers said crossly. ‘And to treat alcoholics. We think they can be safe social drinkers, and we have excellent results. We’re not in the never-more approach like AA. And we’re not the only workers in the field who think this. There’s Drinkwatchers and —’
‘I’m sure,’ Gus said absently, clearly uninterested in any debate over methods of treating alcohol addiction. ‘But it explains why he hid his tipple the way he did. To make them think there he was a total abstainer. That was probably a condition of his employment.’
‘And someone who knew that was able to spike his booze,’ George finished. ‘Which makes it murder, undoubtedly.’
Sonia Chambers sat up very straight. ‘Murder?’ she squeaked. Everyone ignored her.
‘It’s why I assumed, I have to admit, that the fact he’d taken any alcohol at all was an indication that he’d simply slipped from the path of virtue and it wouldn’t take much to knock him out. I didn’t look much further for any indications that he’d been given a heavy dose of alcohol. Dammit, dammit, dammit. I’ll never let previous assumptions affect me like that again!’ She spoke almost violently, ashamed to have been caught out in such a professional blunder. ‘I put it down to accident simply because —’
‘No need to whip yourself,’ Gus said mildly. ‘We’ve got it sussed now, that’s the thing.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Sonia Chambers said. She looked from one to the other, clearly put out. ‘You’d think one of them might have told me.’
‘Who? Told you what?’ Gus said.
‘Why, that someone, one of my people, had died. I’m the senior co-ordinator of the project — the support project — and you’d have thought someone would have told me there’d been a death.’
‘Well, who would have told you? Maybe they didn’t know about the club. And I don’t suppose, even if they had, the murderer would have phoned and said, “Oh, by the way, let them know at the SDAW Club that I’ve just bumped off Tony Mendez.’”
‘Tony Mendez?’ she said, and her face tightened. ‘Oh, no! He was one of our best successes! He’d been in steady employment for years and managing to control his drinking beautifully. Oh, they should have told me!’
‘Who should have told you?’ Gus said again patiently.
She looked at him vaguely and then away, still lost in her own sense of outrage. ‘Oh, someone who knew he was one of mine, of course. Someone from Old East. They could have told me. When did it happen?’
He ignored the question but sat up very straight and stared at her. ‘Someone from Old East? You’ve got other people who are involved with that hospital working here? Who?’
‘I can’t betray confidences.’
‘You bloody can!’ Gus said in a sudden barely controlled rage that made Sonia Chambers blink and move back a little. ‘This is a murder enquiry, lady. So tell me, who?’
‘The doctors,’ she said lamely. ‘The doctors could have told me.’
‘Which doctors?’ He almost roared it.
‘Well, there’s Dr Klein. He might have said — only of course not being surgical, p’raps … But Jim would have known. He’s always in the theatres and that was where Tony worked, wasn’t it?’
‘Jim who?’ Gus said in the dangerous tone of a man whose patience was wearing rather thin.
‘Jim Corton,’ Sonia Chambers said. ‘The anaesthetist, you know. Jim Corton.’
30
‘I’ve got to go, damn it,’ Gus said fretfully, looking at his watch. ‘I’ve got to talk to this woman till she turns inside out and there isn’t an atom of information left in her, but I’m due at the Yard and I can’t muck about with that. Listen, Hagerty, make a date with her to come into Ratcliffe S
treet when I can talk to her. Take a gander at my diary and fix it up with Mike Urquhart, OK?’
‘I can talk to her,’ George said eagerly. ‘Let me try and find out —’
He shook his head. ‘Got to be a proper statement, ducks, you know that. She’ll have to come in. Is she on her way back, Hagerty?’
DC Hagerty poked his head out of the office door and looked both ways down the corridor. ‘No sign of her, Guv,’ he reported.
‘Then go and haul her out of wherever she is. I won’t be mucked around like this.’ He sounded wrathful suddenly. ‘Going off like that — who does she think she is?’
‘A hospital social worker on duty called to deal with some sort of crisis, perhaps?’ George said. ‘Other people do have their jobs to do, you know, even if they are needed to assist the police with their enquiries.’
‘Hmph,’ said Gus, unimpressed. ‘If she doesn’t get back here soon I’ll have her for interfering with the police in their bloody enquiries.’
‘Klein,’ George said almost to herself. She had walked over to the window to stare down at the gardens below, where a few patients were sitting out in the sunshine, which was still comfortable enough to enjoy; by mid afternoon no doubt it would be sweltering again with temperatures up in the eighties, making everyone irritable. But at present it looked peaceful and pretty down there; not remotely like Old East’s battered exterior. ‘Klein. I never thought of him as a possible suspect, but he could be.’
‘Tell me about him,’ Gus said, looking irritably at his watch again.
‘You remember him. He was at Hattie and Sam’s dinner party, the one Zack brought along because he had nowhere to go that evening.’
‘Oh, that bloke!’ Gus lifted his head, clearly forgetting the press of time for a moment. ‘He seemed pleasant enough. Shy, quietish type.’
‘That’s as may be,’ George said. ‘But he’s a researcher and he’s got his own fish to fry. Maybe he had a reason to go after Tony Mendez …’ Her voice drifted away as she thought.
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