Rules, Regs and Rotten Eggs (A Harriet Martens Thriller Book 7)

by HRF Keating

  She decided to let that pass, especially as she now realised John had actually mentioned once that he had put it where he had.

  ‘But was it worth it, your browse?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Not in the least. How can a man who’s been an MP, and thinks he’s fit to lead a new political party, write as unimaginatively as if he was compiling directions for using a video?’

  ‘Nice to know what you think, since I’m going to settle down here and now to read my way through it, from first page to last.’

  ‘Deep insights into the mind of attack victim, Robert Roughouse?’

  ‘That’s one thing I hope for. But I may also have had a hint, just perhaps, that I could get some sort of a clue from it to whoever projected that deadly egg. You saw it happen.’

  ‘I did. But I have to say I doubt very much, however late you stay up, you’ll find what you want.’

  *

  It was almost 4 a.m., sitting tensely reading as rain pattered steadily down on the roof above, before Harriet finished Marching Through Georgia, quite soon re-named Trudging Through Georgia.

  And have I, she thought, however much I made myself concentrate over every line in it, found any hint of what Kailash Gokhale might have drawn to my attention? I have not. Towards the end, just after the third or fourth time I’d dipped the whole of my face in cold water, I’d begun to ask if the tricksy Bengali had been doing no more with his tale of the boy locked in the library than play a joke on me. With one bound …

  But, no, I don’t believe it was a joke. There must be something he remembered as being there that he thought would nudge me in the right direction.

  And I haven’t found it. So that’s that. Perhaps, in a day or two if nothing more hopeful has turned up, I’ll give the whole wretched book another go-over. But it is a wretched book. A wretched job of work. Even the title, I thought when I slapped it closed, is absurdly misleading. Roughouse marched through Georgia itself for not much more than thirty or forty pages. Three or four other countries in that much split-up area of the Caucasus had resounded to his trudging feet. He actually spent longer in tiny Transabistan, where Jessop took those photographs, than he did in Georgia itself.

  Yes, she thought sliding muzzy-headed into bed beside faintly snoring John, Roughouse actually referred to the scene in one of those photographs in Matthew Jessop’s elegant Notting Hill drawing-room.

  What was it he wrote in his slap-happy way? Can’t think.

  Yes, I can. A village full of little boys black-faced and shiny as niggers because of the pitchblende pebbles they kept throwing at one another.

  Stop.

  Can it … can it actually have been just that village, that street, that Gokhale wanted me to react to? Had Matthew Jessop, too, selected that scene out of all the dozens, even hundreds, of photographs he must have taken out there because it was somehow significant?

  The pitchblende? But why should pitchblende be significant? Or seem so to my Bengali friend. Don’t know. Can’t think. God, I’m exhausted.

  Then, with the slipping-away thought that she must remember when next at the Masterton to give Tonelle her crossword answer, she was deep in sleep.

  *

  She stayed sleeping longer than she had meant to, and found when she got downstairs that early-bird John was already at work in the garden, although since Graham’s death he had never liked to be on his own for long, prey to the dim grey thoughts of what once had been. For a little she watched his bent back, dressed this Sunday morning in the colourful, student days shirt he liked to wear by way of cocking a snook at his fellow suit-clad Majestic executives. Another of his quotes came into her mind. One he sometimes produced when he had bedtime play in mind. Raymond Chandler, citing that once famous anthropology tome The Golden Bough, “our sexual habits are pure convention like wearing a black tie with a dinner jacket”.

  Clothes rules, she thought. How absurd they are.

  Then, in a single grim flashback, the thought of herself at Graham’s funeral, dressed head-to-foot in mandatory black. The memory sharp as a thorn pressed into flesh.

  She fought her way, as nowadays she, like John, nearly always did, back to the everyday. Yes, look, John’s already made his Sunday morning trip to the Aslough Parade bakery for oven-fresh croissants, my quota meticulously counted out on the shelf in front of the dishes cupboard.

  She hurried over. Alas, all now limp.

  She ate them nevertheless and took her share, again calculated to an exact half, of the coffee still steaming in its glass jug on the machine’s hot-plate.

  She thought then of ringing the Masterton, but decided it was too early to get a response she could rely upon.

  Might be better in fact to arrive there, unannounced. On this day of the week perhaps Mrs Fishlock will be at church, or at least supervising Mr Fishlock — could the dragon have a mate? — in weeding their garden while the rain-soaked earth made it easy. If so, I might be able simply to make my way to Roughouse’s room, as Charity did, and tell any nurse there that I have permission to enter. And if her patient is able to say more than that one loyal …

  Last gulp of coffee, open the window, call out to John and jump into the car. Waterloo Gardens first, I think, pick up any messages at the incident room, get Bolshy, if he’s come in, to drive me to the Masterton.

  Bolshy was there in the incident room, early though it still was, sitting beside a waste-bin with cheroot smoke reeking out of it, defying equally a not-too-happy Happy Hapgood and the authority of the red-lettered No Smoking notice directly above him. Does he do it deliberately and defiantly, she asked herself as, with a jerk of her head, she directed him to follow her to her office? And should I, as a responsible senior officer do what Happy has decided to do and turn a blind eye?

  She put off any decision.

  ‘Right,’ she said as soon as her door was shut, ‘I’m off to have another go at seeing Roughouse. He may be more fit to answer questions than he was before. No use ringing the Masterton to ask, I’ve a strong feeling I’d just be told he’s no more able to talk at length than when I saw him before.’

  Loyal, royal, spoil, she thought. If he really did try to pronounce that loyal, doesn’t it mean, or at least indicate, there’s some sort of conspiracy to which he both wants to remain loyal and simultaneously thinks he should not keep secret? And is that why really he’s being kept virtually incommunicado?

  ‘You going to get that Tony-whatsit to let you past?’ Bolshy asked. ‘You know she lives on the premises, there already?’

  ‘Thank you for telling me. So, yes. I may see if she’ll take me to Roughouse. And her name’s Tonelle. Not a very difficult one, DS.’

  ‘OK, Tonelle, if that’s what you want to call her. Want me to pave the way for you there? Put the fear of God into her again?’

  ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’

  ‘You going to bribe her with a promise or two then? She won’t do nothing for you unless she gets something out of it, not a girl like that.’

  Harriet took in a breath.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I do have something to offer her.’ She left a little pause. ‘It’s the answer to a tricky crossword clue.’

  The expression on Bolshy’s face then was satisfaction enough. ‘And you think that’ll please her?’ he got out at last. ‘A crossword clue? Straight from the jungle way she is?’

  ‘Yes, I do think she’ll be pleased. And I’d have thought you’d have realised that someone with a name like Tonelle is bound to be a second-generation Brit, if not a third.’

  That did finally shut him up.

  But they did not even get as far as the door before the phone rang.

  What’s this? On Sunday morning? This early?

  She picked up.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Martens?’

  It’s Mrs Fishlock. I’d recognise that voice anywhere. Only … Only isn’t there something a bit odd about it?

  ‘Harriet Martens here.’

>   ‘Miss Martens, I’m ringing from my house. There — There’s something — something terrible I have to tell you.’

  Oh, no. Not that Robert Roughouse has died. Surely not? They said his condition was stable.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Fishlock, what is it?’

  ‘At some time during the night — I’ve only just this moment been told — someone entered the clinic. I don’t know how. Our security …’

  ‘Mrs Fishlock, someone entered the clinic and did what?’

  ‘They murdered Robert Roughouse. Murdered him.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Harriet’s first reaction, one that followed so closely on that word murdered it might have been the same single thought, was that she had never arranged for a police watch at the Masterton. All right, she was still arguing to herself as Bolshy drove her at demon-speed, Matthew Jessop and his friends did spirit Roughouse away to the well-protected Masterton. It could be said doing so was precaution enough. Hadn’t the Masterton always prided itself on the security it provided for de-toxing pop stars? Or, yes, for a celebrity athlete like Charity. Hadn’t that been enough?

  But, say what you like, is Roughouse’s death really and truly down to me? Oughtn’t I to have been aware that, even in the Masterton, he must be in danger? Shouldn’t I have had a 24-hour guard put on the place? Or, at the very least, have warned … Warned who? Mrs Fishlock, I suppose. And, if what stopped me doing that was the damn dragon’s I-know-best attitude, oughtn’t I to have overcome my dislike of it? But, no. No, I simply believed Roughouse’s safety had been provided for. And really I was not altogether wrong.

  Yet am I still to blame, she asked herself again and again as Bolshy spun the car down the narrow country lanes. But … But …

  The question was still unresolved in her mind when they arrived, just minutes before the full panoply of necessary attendants at a murder, the Scene of Crime team, the police photographer, the video-taper and the civilian Scene Manager, temporary boss of them all, guardian of evidence in danger of contamination. Before leaving Waterloo Gardens she had, as Senior Investigating Officer, also requested the attendance of Dr Edwards, the Greater Birchester Police forensic pathologist, who would eventually carry out the autopsy. Bolshy meanwhile had been tasked with notifying the duty forensic physician — Harriet still thought of them as police surgeons — although it was likely to be some time before the moment came for them to declare, following laid-down protocol, that the dead victim was dead.

  *

  Dressed eventually in clumsy-looking white paper cover-all, hair inside clumsy white disposable hood, yet clumsier plastic galoshes on her feet, Harriet waited outside Roughouse’s room, where only the Friday before she had heard him mutter that word loyal, possibly significant. As the minutes went infuriatingly slowly by, all she could do was watch through the partly open door as the Scene Manager, a first-class fusspot insisting always on his full surname, Montague-James, established access routes across the pale grey wall-to-wall carpet inside. She could just make out Roughouse’s body, a mere covered-up shape on the hospital-style bed, in almost exactly the position he had been lying when she had last seen him. Except over the bandaged head she well remembered there was a white-starched pillow, marked by the deep impressions of two heavy fists.

  But whose fists? Whose?

  And how had the person who had held them there got into the room? By climbing up that thickly matted ivy all over the walls of the house? No, both sash windows were shut. By moving a little from side to side she could see the bright brass catches on them were locked. Whoever it was who had got into the room must have made their entry into the house somewhere else.

  ‘DS,’ she called quietly to Bolshy, waiting further along the corridor, ‘here a minute.’

  She told him then to slip away and go, unobtrusively, round the whole building to see, if he could, where during the night hours someone might have broken in. The hours, she thought with a jet of frustration, when at home I was doing no more than plough through the interminable pages of Marching Through Georgia listening to the rain on the roof.

  Bolshy stumped off, for once not looking displeased.

  Inside the room it appeared that every conceivable surface had at last been pointed out for fingerprinting by ultra-pedantic Mr Montague-James. The flashes from the photographer’s camera had come to an end. The video-taper, his awkward-looking machine dangling from his hand, was making his exit, tip-toeing along the taped-out route between the body and the door.

  ‘You can come in now, Superintendent,’ Montague-James called. ‘You’ll see the route tapes clearly laid out. But take particular care just inside. As we first went in, 1 observed the drying-out remains of a wet footmark there. It should provide a measure of identification, now that it’s been satisfactorily photographed. But I still don’t want it trampled on.’

  Damn man, Harriet thought with a bite of the ill-temper which she had stored up while forbidden entry, praising himself for doing no more than work to the rules laid down for him. Why do all the scene managers I have ever watched make such a palaver over doing what they’re meant to do? Glorying in every last twiddle of every last piece of procedure.

  Ah well, I suppose that’s the attraction of the job for a certain sort of ex-police officer, one of the go-by-the-book lot who shelter inside the great web of Police Regulations comforting themselves with the feeling that, even if they’ve got no useful result, they haven’t put a foot wrong.

  Dutifully keeping her hands deep in the pockets of her stiff paper cover-all, she walked the path laid down till she reached the body. The body, it came to her, of the man who thumping energetically at his keyboard, alive and pleased with himself, had written Marching Through Georgia, dully adding in all those other places in the Caucasus he tramped over.

  For a long while she stood beside the hygienic hospital bed, methodically searching for the least thing that might indicate something about whoever had crept into the room in the hours when there had been no nurse present. Questions to be asked about that absence, too. Though most probably, the medical staff must have decided a constant watch was no longer necessary. Condition: stable. How often did I hear that repeated?

  With a nod she agreed to Dr Edwards’ request for the pillow over the head to be removed. Forensics would do what had to be done with it.

  Blood-drained, the bandaged face looked little different from that of the semi-conscious man who, in answer to her gently insistent questions, had managed to utter only some half-dozen syllables, among them that single grunted-out word loyal. If it had actually been that.

  ‘I think for once cause of death’s pretty straightforward,’ Dr Edwards said, ‘even without taking into account other physical signs that may emerge, petechiae in the eyes and so forth. You saw the depth of the hand impressions on that pillow. They speak for themselves, subject to any unexpected forensic evidence, and I doubt if anything significant will emerge there, certainly no nice DNA. You can see from the marks that your man was wearing heavy gloves.’

  ‘Or your woman,’ Harriet more or less automatically put in.

  ‘Oh, yes. Or woman, if you must. But I think the amount of continuous force used really does indicate masculine strength. But I’ll allow you a healthy woman if you want.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The almost statutory mild banter over any horribly murdered corpse brought to an end, Harriet gave her agreement to the body being taken away for the autopsy. Two of the waiting SOCO team at once advanced carrying their heavy plastic sheet.

  She stayed on only until the rolled-up sheet had been safely sticky-taped together. Then, gratefully discarding her cover-all, she set off to see Mrs Fishlock. She had questions to ask.

  Within minutes in the icy dragon’s office she came to wish that the moment she had learnt the news on the phone she had put the questions which had at once sprung to her mind. How was it that the murder had not been discovered till that comparatively late hour of the morning? Why was there no nurse i
n the room? If a high degree of intensive care had no longer been thought necessary, what regular visits had been paid to the sick man? Who was it who had, in fact, found the body? And how exactly had the clinic’s much-vaunted security come to have been breached?

  But, on the phone, out of a feeling she owed someone in such a state of turmoil as icy Mrs Fishlock some consideration, she had failed to ask.

  And now her witness was in full defensive mode.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, prickly with stiffness, ‘it is our rule here that a patient who is sleeping should be left as long as is reasonable. Sleep, you may not realise, Superintendent, is the great healer.’

  Oddly enough, Harriet thought with a jet of rage, I do know that. As does every woman in the world.

  But the spate of excuses went tumbling on. It was of course altogether impossible that a patient in need of 24-hour supervision should not be given it. ‘Our very well-regarded medical staff made their decision, and it was not the duty of anyone less qualified to question it.’ Whatever way in which the person who entered Mr Roughouse’s room had reached it, there could not possibly have been any fault in the clinic’s security. Of course, it had been the nurse on morning duty, Nurse Smithson, who, entering at precisely her laid-down hour, had found the patient dead.

  ‘Then I shall need to see Nurse Smithson.’

  Harriet could no longer endure the endless parade of half-truth information.

  ‘As soon as Smithson’s urgent duties permit I shall arrange for that,’ Mrs Fishlock immediately countered. ‘Every patient at a clinic like ours requires personal nursing attention, you know.’

  ‘Thank you. But could you perhaps, since it seems I must wait to see Nurse Smithson, explain to me now how it is that you were able to assure me that there cannot have been any fault in the clinic’s security last night?’

  ‘Superintendent, there is no possible method of entry to the house. When the building was purchased the most thorough investigations were made solely with security in mind. If anything was found to be less than satisfactory, improvements were at once put in place.’