A Bleeding of Innocents

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the authorities?’ asked Shapiro.

  Swann looked at him as if he were mad. ‘Do you think I didn’t try? I tried Hawley. He set his lawyers on me. I tried to brief lawyers of my own: they asked for evidence. When I tried to produce Staff Nurse Carson I found she’d been got at. Between talking to me and talking to my solicitor she changed her mind. She said she’d made a mistake, that in the heat of the moment she’d thought Saunders was negligent but she now realized it was the inevitable chaos of dealing with an emergency. She insisted that everyone involved in Danny’s operation had done their best for him and what happened was an unavoidable accident. A month later she took up her new job at the Rosedale Nursing Home. I suppose you know it’s owned by the same people as the Feyd Clinic where Dr Saunders worked.’

  ‘You could have tried us,’ Liz suggested softly.

  ‘Oh, yes? You’d have listened, would you? I was the distraught parent of a brain-damaged child. I hadn’t been present at the operation, and all those who were now agreed that everything possible had been done. You’d have done what Hawley did: given me coffee, a little sympathy, and a word of advice to the effect that accusing a doctor of negligence in the absence of concrete evidence could prove expensive.

  ‘I have to say he was right. I hired private detectives. I consulted lawyers. It wasn’t just the compensation that Danny was entitled to: I wanted a public acknowledgement that what happened to him was preventable and the attempt to cover it up was wrong. I kept it up for more than three years. I spent every penny we had, I let the business slide, and in the end I’d achieved nothing. Nothing. When the last lawyer expressed the view that we’d exhausted all the options and sent his bill, I didn’t have the money to pay him. All we had left was the shop, the flat, and a son who was going to need looking after for the rest of his life.

  ‘I suppose it didn’t seem very much to live for. I hadn’t given Mary the support she needed. I was too preoccupied with my crusade to see how faded she’d become, how run away to nothing. After she gave up her job she only had me and Danny, neither of us fit company for an intelligent woman. The prospect of losing the flat was too much. She couldn’t face it. She wouldn’t face it. The future held nothing for her: if we got through this crisis there’d have been another one. She didn’t want a life that was only struggling today and dreading tomorrow. Suicide didn’t just seem an easy way out, it was one. I miss her – oh God how I miss her – but I don’t blame her.’

  When he found her Swann wanted to follow, immediately, take Danny and hurry after her. ‘But I had something to do first. They were owed something for all the misery. I’d tried to get legal redress but the system was loaded against ordinary people. I tried to play the game but they moved the goal-posts: now we were going to play by my rules, the main one being that every action has a reaction and you can’t escape it by lying.’

  So he killed them, the nurse first because her offence was least. ‘I had to punish her. She shouldn’t have lied. But I didn’t want to frighten her. She only got three seconds’ warning, then she was dead.’

  Then the surgeon. ‘I don’t think Mrs Board realized Mrs Page’s death had anything to do with her. When I aimed the gun at her she was surprised. She didn’t remember me. There was no time to explain: I shot her and drove away in the confusion.’

  He smiled at Liz then, so far as she could tell with genuine amusement. ‘I went to the cemetery to tell Mary. To tell her there was only one more and then we’d be on our way. That was when I got involved in the incident with your sergeant. I couldn’t think what to do for the best. I’d just come from shooting Mrs Board, I still had the shot-gun in the car – if that was found I’d never get Saunders and he was the one I wanted most. But I couldn’t watch four thugs beat the living daylights out of someone when I had the power to stop them. I didn’t dare produce the shot-gun, though, I had to gamble on the Luger being enough to scare them off. Thank God it was. Then when he said he was a policeman—! My heart was in my mouth till I could get him to the hospital.’

  Finally he described how he had dealt with Saunders. For the first time he showed signs of remorse. ‘It all got out of hand, rather. I wanted to show him the enormity of what he’d done, to feel it for himself. Once would have been enough. But I enjoyed watching him suffer. I didn’t think you could cram enough hurting into the few minutes I had to pay him for what he’d done. But I was wrong. I had a better cause than vengeance.’

  When Swann’s statement was complete Shapiro delivered him to the holding cells, then took Liz outside for the fresh air they both needed. The police station, like most buildings in Castlemere, was an old structure adapted to its present use: from its genesis as a private house it had retained a small back garden and access to one of the canals. They walked along the towpath side by side, easy in their familiarity, Shapiro with his hands in his pockets, Liz with her head tipped back to drink cool air. The spectre of Emil Saunders, suffocating by inches, haunted her still.

  After a while Shapiro said, ‘You know the saddest aspect of all this? It’s that five people are dead, and one’s going to prison for the rest of his life, and actually there wasn’t a genuinely bad person among them.’

  Liz shot him a startled glance. ‘You don’t consider Swann a bad man?’

  ‘Lord, no,’ said Shapiro, breathing the words like a benediction. ‘Wrong-headed, certainly. Arguably insane. But bad? If ever a man was driven literally to distraction by events over which he had no control, that man was George Swann. He tried to act properly. The system frustrated him, shut him out. He had either to accept the unfairness of it or fight back.’ He shook his head, bemused. ‘Who’d have looked at George Swann and guessed he’d fight?’

  ‘Saunders, then.’

  Shapiro shook his head. ‘Saunders wasn’t a bad man either. He was a weak man, a foolish one, but he never meant to create this situation. What he did was reprehensible but he’s not the first to need Dutch courage to do a stressful job.’

  ‘He let Swann bankrupt himself rather than admit his fault. He played on the affection of one colleague and the anxiety of another when both women wanted to tell the truth. He bribed Kerry Page to change her story. He got her the job at Rosedale, and he went on seeing her – he said as much to Hawley, what Julian Perrin saw confirms it – to keep her on his side.’

  ‘You think she was blackmailing him?’

  ‘Probably not. He had influence at the place where she worked, she couldn’t threaten him without making problems for herself. Once the time for telling was past they had to keep one another sweet. But he couldn’t lean on Maggie Board, so he pretended to love her.’

  ‘He was afraid, Liz! It was too late to do anything for the baby so he tried to save himself. Irresponsible as he was, Emil Saunders never meant to hurt anyone.’

  They had reached a bend in the canal. Ahead dark buildings loomed over the ribbon of water until they swallowed it entirely and it plunged into the darkness of Mere Basin.

  Remembering an earlier conversation, and changing the subject but only a little, Liz said, ‘Whatever was Donovan going on about? That is a strange young man.’

  Shapiro grimaced. ‘Isn’t he just? But he’s a good copper, Liz. I know he gets up your nose but try to remember that. He’s worth the trouble he causes. Get him on your side and you’ll never have a stauncher ally. His heart’s in the right place, he’s all the guts you could ask for, and he has a better mind than you might think from talking to him. But strange – yes, I really couldn’t argue on that. What was he saying?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Something about things happening round him and it never being his fault.’

  Shapiro nodded sombrely. ‘Donovan’s Luck.’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘That’s right, that’s what he said. You’re not telling me anybody else believes in it?’

  ‘Alan Clarke didn’t.’

  ‘But Alan Clarke’s—’ She stopped, her eyes widening.

  ‘Quite
,’ said Shapiro, walking on.

  ‘It’s true, then? People who work with him get hurt?’

  He gave her a laconic smile. ‘Want a transfer?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said testily. ‘But—’

  She was about to ask where the myth began and how much of it was founded in fact. But they heard feet running on the towpath and turned to see a constable sprinting after them. As he came within ear-shot he stopped and panted, ‘Message for you, sir. Will you go to Rosedale Avenue right away? Sergeant Donovan says he can prove it was murder and who did it.’

  Liz was confused. ‘Of course it was murder. We’ve got the murderer. We’ve got a confession.’

  The constable made allowances for the fact that she was new, didn’t yet appreciate the single-mindedness of DS Donovan’s style. ‘Sorry, ma’am, not the Swann case. DI Clarke. Sergeant Donovan reckons he can prove who murdered DI Clarke.’

  Chapter Two

  Julian Perrin answered Page’s door. He looked pale and drawn, crumpled as if he’d spent too long in the same clothes. But his eyes warmed at the sight of Donovan and he practically dragged him inside. ‘Ladysmith is relieved,’ he whispered dramatically.

  Donovan knew better than to ask where Lady Smith fitted into all this. He glanced round what he could see of the flat from the hall. ‘David’s here, is he?’

  ‘Oh, he’s here all right,’ said Perrin. ‘He shouldn’t be. He should be in a psychiatric unit under the care of someone who knows more about depressive illness than I do. But he won’t leave here. So I sit with him and the hours pass. Every time he goes to the bathroom I wonder if I missed something – I moved the razor, the aspirin, and the Harpic but there’s nothing so ingenious as a would-be suicide. And every time I go to the bathroom I wonder if he’ll still be here when I come out.’

  Donovan whistled in his teeth. ‘That bad?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Everything in his tone and manner confirmed it.

  ‘What can we do for him?’

  ‘Stay with him,’ Perrin said simply. ‘We can’t force him to go anywhere. But I can stay with him. I’ve told the hospital I won’t be in for a while. They didn’t like it but what the hell, I’m a nurse, if I can’t help sick people who can? But listen, Sergeant, I have to get out for half an hour – some things I need, some things I have to do. Honestly, half an hour would do it. Can you stay with him till I get back?’

  Donovan was anxious to get out of the house as well. He was here from duty not inclination. He was itching to return to what remained for him the important business of proving that Jack Carney killed Alan Clarke. It seemed now that closing the file on Kerry Page wouldn’t be that easy. But Donovan wasn’t a social worker: he might feel for the bereaved man but he could achieve more elsewhere.

  ‘Sure,’ he said tiredly. ‘I have to talk to him anyway.’

  ‘You’re a dear,’ averred Perrin, disconcertingly, as he fled for the landing.

  Donovan found Page in the cluttered little living room. Not reading, not watching TV, just sitting. He didn’t look up at the sound of the door.

  He still hadn’t shaved, washed, or changed his clothes. An aura of apathy surrounded him like cigarette smoke. The flat was neater – because Perrin was there, Donovan supposed, he’d be as uncomfortable amid squalor as a cat with butter on its paws – but it emphasized rather than disguised the little island of misery in the corner of the room.

  Donovan knew something about misery. He knew the power of it, how it clung to the body of its victim like a vampire, cloaking his spirit in darkness, drinking his soul. Because of the long dark nights when Donovan had heard its wings beating over his head it frightened him in a way that less personal horrors did not. But he had to stay until Perrin returned so he might as well do what he’d come here for. Perhaps knowing the reason for what happened would help Page deal with it.

  ‘Mr Page?’ He didn’t look round. Donovan hoisted a hip on the edge of the dresser in front of him and perched there, cradling his plaster, like a stork taking a breather en route to deliver a baby. ‘I thought you’d want to know. We have him – the man who shot Kerry. It dates back to something that happened at the hospital, before you knew her.’

  He gave a brief digest of what he knew – he’d left before hearing the full explanation but even if he’d known more Page could not have taken it in. Even keeping to the outline, using simple words and short sentences, Donovan felt that the effort of understanding was almost more than Page could manage. He made no response. Donovan couldn’t be sure if anything he was saying was reaching him, filtering into Page’s brain through the complex layers of rage, grief, misery, and despair.

  The casual observer would not have listed rage among the emotions swamping David Page. But Donovan had been there. He knew that of the various states that could mimic calm, one was a turmoil so violent that given any rein at all it could tear a man apart. Donovan was uneasy in his company, not because he didn’t understand David Page but because he understood him too well. They were vulnerable to the same demons: Donovan looked at Page and saw not only a man in distress but a reflection of his own frailty. His instincts told him to get away from Page before the infection consuming him identified another host.

  But on a less primitive level he was concerned what happened to Page. The man was manifestly failing to cope and somebody had to try and help him. Donovan had neither training nor talent for such a role but at least until Perrin came back he was stuck with it. He ventured, ‘If you need help getting things organized there are some people I can call.’

  ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘Suppose I talk to your boss.’

  Page’s head rocked back in a peal of laughter except that no sound came. ‘And tell him what? That I’ve lost control of myself so he should put me in charge of one of his aircraft? Tell me, Sergeant, would you be happy in an aeroplane I was flying?’

  ‘Not now,’ agreed Donovan. ‘Of course you can’t fly now. But this’ll pass. I know it doesn’t feel like it, it feels it’s going to last for ever, but it won’t. You’ll be able to do anything you could do before, including your job. And it’ll pass quicker,’ he added sharply, ‘if you stop wallowing in it.’

  That provoked a reaction. Page’s eyes kindled. ‘You think I’m enjoying this? That maybe it was worth losing my wife for the sheer fun of having do-gooders stalk me with paper hankies and Freud? You have no idea how I feel. You think that losing your wife is like losing your job, or crashing your car, or having your dog run over – upsetting at the time but these things happen and life goes on.

  ‘Only it isn’t like that. It’s like somebody reached into the body of you and ripped out an organ you can’t live without. And the flesh is throbbing, and the wound is bleeding, and the nerves are screaming, and you know that any moment the pain’ll overwhelm you and you’ll go down. And then you’ll die because it isn’t possible to go on living after something that vital’s been ripped out of you, however many people tell you to pull yourself together. So you wait for it to end. And after four days you’re still waiting. Still dying and not yet dead. That’s what it feels like. Like being butchered in slow motion. How dare you tell a man with his guts hanging out to pull himself together?’

  ‘I do understand,’ Donovan began.

  Page wouldn’t let him continue. ‘No, you don’t. You don’t begin to understand. Your boss got killed: do you suppose that remotely qualifies you to judge real bereavement, real grief?’

  Donovan had had enough of this. He’d supposed that if Page would talk about what had happened that would be the first step in coming to terms with it. Well, Page was talking all right. He was talking as if the cavity inside him had filled up not with blood but with words; as if a dam had cracked and all the words that had built up behind it were flooding out. But it wasn’t Kerry he was talking about. He was talking about himself – his loss, his pain. In his agony was a powerful streak of self-pity. He couldn’t see how he could manage alone.

  �
�So who gave you a monopoly on suffering?’ snarled Donovan, his patience exhausted. ‘You lost your wife. I’m sorry. George Swann lost his wife, his son, his business, and his home, and he’s going to be an old man before he walks free. That’s my idea of losing everything. You’re young, you’ve got everything ahead of you. You can get over this, if you want to.’

  ‘Swann!’ Page’s voice soared till it cracked. ‘You want me to feel sorry for the man who murdered my wife? Because four years ago a doctor made a mistake and Kerry was too scared to report him? OK, it was hard to have that happen to his baby. Life is hard sometimes. And then you die.’

  Donovan had his mouth open to snap back when Page’s words hit him in the belly, knocking the breath out of him. His eyes rounded, otherwise his expression froze.

  After a pause so long the electric silence crackled he managed, ‘What did you say?’

  Page stared at him irritably. ‘What’s the matter with you, aren’t you even listening? I said it was tough on him to have that happen to his child. But it didn’t give him the right to murder three people. He had no right to kill Kerry.’

  ‘No – no, you didn’t,’ stumbled Donovan, white-faced, shaking his head. ‘You said it was hard. You said, “Life’s hard, and then you die.”’

  ‘So?’ demanded Page, exasperated almost beyond bearing.

  So he’d heard those words before. Those very words, that odd dour expression that he’d never met anywhere else. Lying in the dirt under the viaduct behind the gasworks, his vision a slice of tail-lights and shiny shoes, his body a pulsing mass of hurts and his mind numb with terror because he knew the car was coming back for him and he couldn’t get himself out of the way. And the man standing over him had rolled him, lifting his shoulder with the toe of one shoe for a better look at his face. And seeing he was still alive, still at least marginally conscious, he’d said, ‘Life’s hard, Donovan. And then you die.’