by Jo Bannister
She wondered how Donovan was getting on with Dr Saunders, if the anaesthetist was any more forthcoming. He might be. If he was not himself the killer he must have noticed that he was now the only survivor of the surgical team. Liz was sure of one thing. If Saunders hadn’t yet thought that he might be the next victim, Donovan would make sure he thought about it now.
In its heyday Castlemere was one of the most prosperous small towns in England. It stood at the junction of canals connecting London with the growing industrial centres of the Midlands and those feeding westward towards the ports of the Bristol Channel. This brought the world to its door and the small traders of Castlemere developed first into larger traders and then into genuine merchants to take advantage of the fact. They built warehouses and mills, iron-works and tanneries. They cornered the boot and shoe industry. When the first railways cast a cloud over the thriving canals they hedged their bets by bringing in the railway too.
And when their prosperity was assured, they built houses. They built rows of little millworkers’houses under the shadow of the great mills they served. They built a neat greystone house for the canal superintendent and a red-brick one for the station-master. They built rows of pretty alms cottages to show that they had hearts of gold beating under their Albert chains.
For themselves they built mansions. They were Victorian mansions to be sure, solid and comfortable but less grandiose than the country seats with which earlier merchant princes had equipped themselves. For the most part these Victorian entrepreneurs had risen from humble roots and took a perverse pride in their lack of breeding. Their homes were still big enough to house a dozen millworkers’ families in unaccustomed luxury.
When the canals stagnated in the second half of the nineteenth century, and a hundred years later the railways met a similar fate, the factory owners’families moved on so that many of their mansions stood empty and derelict. Some were demolished, others were converted to hotels, to offices, and to flats.
Emil Saunders had a penthouse flat in the most prestigious of these surviving mansions, an ugly but imposing square-built edifice of iron-black brick called Fairbairn House. It had a small park set with mature trees and sweeping lawns which, since the lease included the employment of a gardener, could be enjoyed without labour. Because of its elevation, Dr Saunders’ flat had a stunning view down the lawns and between the trees to the glint of a small lake close to the boundary.
But Dr Saunders was not enjoying his view today. There was no answer to Donovan’s rap at his door. Donovan tried again but heard no sound of stirring. Irritated, he went back downstairs. A man was passing a desultory rag over the communal brasswork in the hall. ‘Do you know when Dr Saunders’ll be back?’
The hall porter glanced at the grandfather clock under the stairs. ‘Depends how much he’s got to do. Five minutes if he’s only gone for his paper, an hour if it’s his weekly shop. You only just missed him.’
For five minutes it wasn’t worth coming back. Donovan thought he’d spend the time gathering background information. ‘Known him long, have you – Dr Saunders?’
‘He’s been here about five years. Most days I say “Good morning” to him once and “Good evening” to him once. Does that constitute knowing a man?’
Donovan recognized the hall porter as a philosopher. ‘Had any problems with him?’
‘No. Well, you wouldn’t expect to, professional gent like that. He meets his obligations, he’s polite to his neighbours, he remembers the staff at Christmas. What else is there to say? Once Miss Duke’s car wouldn’t start and he gave her a lift into town. She asked how she could repay him, and he said she could return the favour some day when the Porsche wouldn’t start.’
‘And?’
‘The Porsche always starts.’
‘Funny,’ said Donovan, ‘I had the idea he was a bit of a ladies’ man.’
If the porter felt any reluctance to gossip about his residents he didn’t let it hinder him. ‘Dr Saunders? You’ve got the wrong man, squire. Or if he is he never brings them home. Doesn’t bring anybody home much. Not one of the world’s great socializers. He has his colleagues round for a party every New Year, otherwise he doesn’t get many visitors. I don’t think he rates stars in anybody’s little black book.’
It had been ten minutes and there was no sign of the Porsche. ‘OK,’ decided Donovan. ‘I’ve another call to make down the hill. I’ll be back here in an hour, that should give him time to pack his freezer. If he looks he’s going out, ask him to wait – otherwise don’t bother him.’ He meant, and the hall porter knew he meant, Don’t tell him I was here.
Chapter Five
It didn’t take an hour. Page had nothing to tell him; indeed, found it difficult speaking to him at all. Donovan was no psychiatrist and had no bent for social work, but he was becoming uneasy about David Page. He seemed different every time Donovan saw him: one day tears, the next rigid control, now depression so deep it was like talking to a man down a well. Donovan thought he’d warn DI Graham: if Page was coming apart somebody should be looking after him.
The flat was quietly mouldering under a layer of dust and neglect. Page wasn’t eating much. Mostly the meals he had made had gone cold virtually untouched; they sat around the flat as if somebody else might tidy up if Page left it long enough. He was sleeping on the couch with a quilt over him. The edge of the quilt was thrown back as if he’d just got up and his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them. Donovan was no slave to housework but even he could smell the faint musty miasma of decay.
It wasn’t so much the pots and the dust and the quilt: they could be tidied away in half an hour and the windows flung wide to a cleansing breeze. The real problem was Page’s inability to cope with what had happened to him. No breeze could aerate his foundering spirit.
Page looked at him as if through layers of gauze. His voice was a low monotone. ‘Any news?’
Donovan gave an apologetic shrug. ‘It’s got awful complicated, this. There’s one idea we’re looking into. Did Kerry ever mention Dr Emil Saunders to you?’
Page couldn’t summon any interest. ‘Who?’
‘He was the anaesthetist when she worked with Mrs Board. He left about the same time she did.’
He might have been thinking, he might just have switched off for a minute. Then he shook his head apathetically.
‘The name means nothing?’
‘No.’
Donovan steeled himself to go on. ‘We think he may have been the man she was seeing.’
Page looked up at that. His eyes were bottomless with misery. ‘I don’t believe that.’
‘There’s the possibility that she’ – he shrank from saying the word blackmail, looked for a euphemism – ‘that he may have lent her some money. Did she seem to have more money than you expected? In the last year, particularly in the last month?’
Page’s face creased up in weary irritation. ‘Money? She’d all the money she needed. She’d no need to borrow money. And why—?’ But he didn’t finish the question. Perhaps he had an inkling what the answer might be.
‘So she never talked about working with Dr Saunders?’ Page shook his head. ‘Or seeing him, or borrowing money from him?’
‘No.’
Donovan was getting nowhere, and he didn’t think he’d get any further by pushing harder. Either Page knew nothing or the state he was in prevented him from communicating. He went to leave. But at the door he paused. ‘Look – are you all right?’
Page’s head went back in a silent bark of a laugh. ‘My wife’s been murdered. First you thought I did it because she was seeing another man. Now you think she owed him money so maybe he did it. I can’t get her body released for a funeral. And my boss thinks I should take some leave: nobody wants an emotionally disturbed pilot. Can’t altogether blame them, can you? Am I all right? I’m fine; and I bet Mrs Lincoln enjoyed the play too.’
Before he left Donovan put a note through Julian Perrin’s door asking him to look in on Page when
he could and call if he needed anything. He didn’t know what else he could do.
He returned to Fairbairn House. A charcoal-grey Porsche was parked outside. He nodded to the porter as he went through the hall. ‘He’s back then.’
‘You hadn’t been gone five minutes,’ the porter said cheerfully. ‘He wasn’t shopping, just his paper and some stamps. The other chap had more luck, arrived right behind him.’
Donovan frowned. ‘Who’s that then?’
‘I’ve never known Dr Saunders have two visitors in one day. You know what did it, don’t you? Me telling you he never sees anyone. Mind you, family’s fine but it’s not a social life. And a brother-in-law’s only just family.’
All the hairs down Donovan’s neck stood up under his collar. He had to remember to breathe. ‘His brother-in-law? You know him, do you?’
‘Never seen him before. He didn’t stay long – just returning Dr Saunders’shot-gun. Funny, I’d never have taken him for a shooting man. Either of them, actually.’
But Donovan wasn’t listening. He’d snatched the pass-keys out of the porter’s hand – he’d been jingling them absently while they talked – and was haring up the staircase as fast as his long legs would carry him.
Dr Saunders was being cautious. Two women he used to work with had been murdered: he wasn’t blind to the possibility that he was next on the list. He knew a sort of reason why he might be. If he’d been sure he’d have gone to the police for help. But that would mean explanations, an end to his career, probably criminal charges as well. He hesitated to act while there was a chance that he was wrong, that it was a coincidence, that he was in no danger.
So when his doorbell rang he was careful how he answered it. But it was a policeman. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, sir, but we have reason to believe you’re the intended next victim of a man who’s shot two women you used to work with. I’m here to arrange protection for you.’
So they knew. They knew of the connection between him and the women – not just that they’d worked together but about the thing which made them targets for a madman. Saunders let out a sigh, half trepidation, half relief. He was not an evil man, he was a weak man. He’d never intended to do harm. In a way he’d be glad to have light shone in the four-year-old shadows, whatever the consequences. Also, though he faced legal sanction at least he was now safe from violence.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said, opening the door.
He didn’t look like a man around whom mayhem revolved. He was not far short of forty now and not bearing the years particularly well. He had few interests outside his work and his home, and since he drove between the two in a charcoal-coloured Porsche he’d put on weight. It showed in his face and round his middle, and his lack of height made it hard for him to carry it with dignity. His light brown hair was thinning alarmingly. When he gave his hall mirror more than a passing glance he couldn’t help notice how little remained of the young doctor who with his ready charm and boyish good looks had put a twinkle into female eyes the length and breadth of Castle General.
When the policeman came inside Saunders saw the long gun-case he carried and shuddered. It was serious, then. They were expecting an attempt on his life. After four years of playing it carefully, of nursing his relations with the two women who could ruin him – roses on Maggie Board’s birthday that she never acknowledged, to remind her how things had once been between them, an occasional lunch with an uncomfortable Kerry Page to remind her that she owed her present job to his benign influence – it seemed he hadn’t got away with it after all. Seeing no point in further evasion he said, ‘How much do you know?’
And the man in the tweed jacket said, ‘I know it all, Dr Saunders,’ withdrawing from the case not a police rifle but a double-barrelled shot-gun.
Slowly Saunders’plump face fell apart, his eyes and the corners of his mouth sinking in the wreckage. When he spoke it was only a breathy whisper. ‘I know you.’
Chapter Six
The man who was not a policeman nodded pleasantly. ‘Good. Then you know why I’m here.’ His eyes on the gun, Saunders stood mute with fear. Seeing what he was thinking the man shook his head. ‘Oh, no, Dr Saunders, I’m not going to shoot you. Not unless you make me. I want to tell you about my family. How things have worked out for us since we last met. I don’t want to be holding this thing all the time, so I hope you’ll forgive me—?’ He’d brought a length of clothes-line. The chair at Saunders’desk was a substantial oak piece with padded arms that could have been made for the job.
Saunders lacked the courage to struggle. Anyway it would have done him no good while the man had the gun. Better tied and alive than free with a hole through his middle.
When he was fixed securely in his chair the man put the gun aside, settled himself on the desk and began to talk. While he was talking he took some items out of his pockets and put them on the desk beside him. The sharp knife sent a quiver through Saunders’ veins, but the thing he couldn’t take his eyes off was a box of wax ear-plugs.
‘You see before you,’ said the man, still calmly, still pleasantly, ‘someone whose life you have destroyed. Perhaps not by choice but not accidentally either: wantonly, without regard for the consequences. Even if I was disposed to forgive you, which I’m not, if I let you get away with it sooner or later you’d destroy another family the same way.
‘I know what happened. I talked to Staff Nurse Carson, remember, before you corrupted her. You shouldn’t have done that. She was a decent young woman. If she’d stood by what she told me, as she would have done except for your weasel promises, she’d be alive today. Mrs Board too, if she hadn’t lied to protect you. Why did she do that?’ He waited for an answer.
Saunders whispered, ‘She – we—’ and could not go on.
The man raised an incredulous eyebrow. ‘You were lovers? My God. For all the questions I asked, I never heard a whisper of that. She was years older than you. What could a woman like that – a clever woman, a surgeon at the top of her profession – possibly see in a little toe-rag like you?’
This time the question was rhetorical because he went on without pause. ‘I was telling you about my family. Danny made more progress than you might have expected. He can sit up and play with his toys. He can eat normally, if I allow an hour to feed him. He can make a sort of howling noise to let me know he’s uncomfortable. He won’t be going to school, of course – not this year, not ever. He’s not a vegetable but he’d have trouble out-thinking a goldfish. That’s my son and heir.
‘My wife was a teacher. Head of the English Department: she had a good career until she gave it up to look after Danny. That wouldn’t have mattered so much if she hadn’t lost everything else as well. We had to sell the house, I spent the money on lawyers. It’s not cheap, trying to prove negligence by a doctor – particularly when his colleagues close ranks round him. The Legal Aid stopped when we couldn’t get the evidence we needed. You’re not allowed to waste public money, you have to waste your own.
‘My solicitor – my last solicitor, after I’d exhausted all the more respectable ones – kept going till my money ran out too, then closed the file and sent his bill. That was about a month ago. Of course, you know – he wrote to tell Hawley the action was withdrawn and I’m sure Hawley told you. I imagine you all went out for dinner together, to celebrate.’ For a moment Saunders looked as if he was going to say something, then he changed his mind.
The man shrugged and continued. ‘All I had left to sell was the shop, which meant losing the last of our income and our flat as well. For four years, all the time she needed my support and I was trying to bring you to book, I never heard a word of complaint from Mary. Then a fortnight ago I came home to find Danny in his playpen and Mary in the bath with her wrists slit. She didn’t leave a note. She didn’t have to.’
He looked round the room then as if seeking something. ‘When I leave here I’m going to kill Danny, then myself. You’re a doctor – an anaesthetist, a man with a comp
rehensive knowledge of drugs. I’m sure you have something here I can use, something quick and painless. Remember what you’ve done to that child already, don’t make him suffer any more.’
There were drugs in the bathroom cabinet. In a barely audible whisper Saunders described one and the appropriate dosage. When the man had found it Saunders, feeling that any last words he wanted to utter he’d better try and get out now, half-said, half-sobbed, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ echoed the man. He returned to his perch on the desk and picked up the box of ear-plugs. ‘You’ve destroyed five people’s lives and you’re sorry? You went into an operating theatre to anaesthetize a baby knowing you were intoxicated, and you tell me you’re sorry?’
‘I was tired,’ muttered Saunders, his eyes desperate. ‘It was only a whiff of nitrous oxide. But the oxygen tube blocked and I didn’t notice. It was only when Maggie said he was turning blue … And I panicked. God help me, I panicked.’
‘Another minute and he’d have died on the table; you’d have had to face the consequences then. But Mrs Board got the oxygen flowing again and finished off. Then she saw Mary and me. She lied to us. She said Danny wasn’t coming out of the anaesthetic as he should, that they were monitoring his condition, that we shouldn’t worry too much but she’d felt she should inform us. But it was nothing to do with the anaesthetic. He’d been starved of oxygen. If she’d told the truth she’d still be alive. She did her best for Danny, but her lies cost me my wife.’
He was rolling the pink wax cylinders between his fingers, warming them, kneading them, making them malleable. Saunders watched his hands as if mesmerized. He didn’t know what they were for, but he knew enough to be terrified.
