First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘If you’re a sensible woman you won’t want sugar with that lot,’ he said. ‘But in case you’re like the rest of us, here’s a couple o’ sachets for you.’ He pulled them from his pocket and dropped them on the desk. ‘All right, tuck in, then we can do some talking.’

  ‘You’re impossible, you know that?’ she said and sat down in her own chair, which he had studiously left for her. ‘You march in here, take over, decide everything …’

  ‘Someone has to,’ he said comfortably. ‘It’s quicker that way. There’s nothing wrong with all this, is there?’ indicating the desk and its spread. ‘I asked you if you wanted BLTs and you said yes.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing wrong, but –’

  ‘Then what’s to fuss over? Eat up, girl. We ain’t got all day!’

  She gave up. There was nothing else she could do and the sandwiches were indeed very good, and could have come from the Stage Deli in New York, and the coffee was exactly what she needed. By the time she’d finished she felt well contented.

  ‘Now,’ he said, clearing the debris with deft movements. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ He pulled a notebook from his pocket and set it on the desk between them. ‘I’ve got my own ideas. But let me hear yours first.’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘Is this a consult? Medical style?’

  He peered up at her. ‘No. It’s a discussion. Police style.’

  ‘Is it what you usually do with your pathologist?’

  He seemed to consider that. ‘No. But I’ve never had such a nosy pathologist before.’

  ‘Nosy? Hey!’

  ‘Interested, then. My God, you’re a bit of a Harrier, aren’t you?’

  She was diverted. ‘Harrier?’

  ‘Jump jet. Vertical take-off. Keep your cool, Dr B.! Look, I thought you wanted to be involved with this investigation. After all, if it hadn’t been for you being so bloody-minded we wouldn’t be doing it at all.’

  ‘Well, yes, I do want to. But I was a bit surprised.’

  ‘Never be surprised by me. I do what I think’s right. I walk all over the regulations when it suits me, and run things my own way. So far I’ve not had any disasters or failed cases, so they let me get on with it. The day I give ’em a cock-up’ll be the day they meddle with my style. Till then, though, let’s make the most of it. OK? OK. Now, have you looked through that stuff I left you? That printout from Oxford’s computer disc?’

  ‘Yes. And it seems to me –’

  ‘Wait a moment. Let me be ready for this.’ He flipped the notebook open and took a pen from his breast pocket. ‘OK. Let me have your ideas and then I’ll offer you mine, and we’ll see what sort of a pudding we can make out of our shared ingredients at the end of it. You never know. We may solve this one just sitting here at your desk. Seeing all the donkey work’s been done.’ And he smiled at her widely. ‘Fire away.’

  25

  She was hesitant at first, but it got easier. ‘Well. It’s obvious he was a blackmailer, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Stop coming on like a school teacher,’ she said. ‘If I ask a question I’m entitled to an answer. And I’m saying it’s obvious and asking if you agree.’

  ‘All right. I agree.’

  ‘Thank you. Right. He was a blackmailer. He identified the people he was biting by letters of the alphabet. Nothing very remarkable about that, but I can’t work out his code, I’m afraid. I mean, look here.’ She smoothed the printout on the desk between them. ‘Against this steady monthly five thousand pounds all he has is H.I. That could be anyone. I’ve tried to think who there is here at the hospital who might have those initials but got nowhere.’

  ‘Now why should you think that?’

  ‘Think what?’

  ‘That it has to be someone here.’

  ‘Ah.’ She lifted her head and looked at him closely. ‘I wonder if you’ll agree with this? It seemed to me that the person who killed Oxford has to be someone who had easy access to various places here at Old East. Digitalis is a common drug and easily obtained, but it is a prescription drug and getting hold of thirty-odd tablets when you don’t have a right to could be tricky – but here it would be very easy indeed. No one counts the stock of digitalis the way they count dangerous drug doses.’

  ‘But the stuff could be obtained outside a hospital.’

  ‘Oh, yes of course. All drug stores have it. But there’s another thing that makes it unlikely. And that’s the method of giving it to Oxford.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Our chap who really likes to get to the bottom of things.’

  ‘Please, a moratorium on gags like that? It had to be put in a cream and then in a tube and done in such a way that the user wouldn’t notice it had been spiked.’

  ‘It could have been done by one of the doctors who dispensed it, of course.’

  ‘You’d have told me if you had any evidence it had been.’

  ‘Shrewd point, Dr B. Yes, you’re right there. We checked the doctors he’d visited in Harley Street and they hadn’t seen him for a long time – I thought I’d told you that – and most of the tubes of haemorrhoid cream we found in his flat had been dispensed ages ago, almost a year, by John Bell and Croyden. There’s no reason at all to think there was any meddling there. Anyway, I checked with them and they keep good records. They were able to prove to me the tampering couldn’t have happened while the tubes were in their establishment. The place is run with the security of Fort Knox. So we can definitely scrub them off the list, and the prescribing doctor too.’

  ‘Which leaves us with Old East, for the tube that killed him.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And the pharmacy’s the place to look at. They deal with all the drugs and so on. And it’s easy to get into the pharmacy here.’

  ‘It is? But what about all the alarms and special keys?’

  ‘Oh, they’re there, but I was able to get in to wander round during the day – no one queries one of the consultants taking a peer about – and I saw things. One was that the list of instructions for turning off and turning on the alarms is pinned to the wall near the keypad that has to be punched, and secondly there’s a list of who holds what keys and where.’

  ‘Would you believe it!’ He sounded disgusted. ‘You saw that for yourself?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I ought to go down there and give them a right royal rollocking, oughtn’t I? If they had a break-in and someone walked out with a lot of dangerous drugs, there’d be all hell to pay.’

  ‘Be fair. The really important drugs are in a safe and there’s no way anyone can get into that without knowing the combination. And only two people in the pharmacy have that information, and it’s changed every month anyway. They put a note of the combination in the main hospital safe to be available for emergencies, but otherwise it’s inaccessible to staff. But access isn’t necessary for this case. Digitalis is just on open shelves, and the equipment for filling tubes is on a bench. They make up quite a lot of stuff here for the dermatology unit. We’ve got a consultant who invents his own gunge, it seems.’

  ‘I see. So you say it’s feasible that the murderer is someone here at Old East who used Old East facilities to help him commit his crime.’

  ‘I think so. What say you?’

  He grinned from ear to ear. ‘Don’t throw anything at me but I have to tell you I’d already worked that one out. I interviewed the pharmacist last week. I didn’t realize that it was made quite so easy for intruders to get in but he did admit the security wasn’t as tight as it might be.’

  She looked at him almost nonplussed. Then she said, ‘Look, am I just wasting my time here? I thought you wanted me to help, and I’m glad to do it. But if all you’re doing is checking me to see if I’ve walked the same route you have, you can go to hell in your fancy car and not bother to come back. I’ve got better things to do than play silly games.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. I truly did want to talk to
you about this stuff. I can’t talk to Dudley, because he just says, “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir,” and doesn’t fancy himself a man of ideas. I’m not the bloke to go to my Super and bounce ideas off him. I like to present him with a nice finished job, know what I mean? The department’s working flat out on any number of things – we’ve got some armed robberies we’re still sorting out as well as a few con artists on the patch and Gawd knows what else – so who can I talk to, eh?’ He looked pathetically at her. ‘The fact that you’ve covered the same ground as I have doesn’t mean I’m testing you, you know. It just means that you really are my sort of lady. You think the same way I do. No copper could ask for more.’

  She looked at him suspiciously. He gazed back at her guilelessly and she sighed and gave in. ‘All right, I’ll believe you. I shouldn’t, but I will. Now, where was I?’

  ‘Proving that the murderer was probably an Old East person, and that therefore the initials used to code the sums of money on Oxford’s printout could match individuals here.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Well, I looked at all these initials here, and there was one odd thing I noticed.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘A lot of them seemed to have the central letter H. I find that odd. Not everyone’s got a middle name and anyway it’s too much to expect everyone’s middle name to be Harold or Hannah or something of that sort.’

  ‘You’re right. I thought so too. I can’t work it out at all. It’s probably something very simple but they can be the hardest codes to crack, the simple ones. Because they’re so easy you can’t get a handle on them.’

  ‘Isn’t there a general technique you can use?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we could try it on the computer wizards at the Yard. Or on your helpful friend – over at Wimbledon, wasn’t it?’

  She kept her head down so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Mmm. Wimbledon.’

  ‘We could see if they can use one of their code-breaking systems for it. But as I say, it mightn’t be much good because it looks too easy.’

  ‘Let me have a go, anyway,’ George said. ‘I’ll copy the list and keep it. Is that permitted?’

  ‘Of course. Here, I’ll sing ’em out. You write ’em down and –’

  ‘Not all of them. If I can’t do it with a sample, I can’t do it at all. Give me half a dozen or so to start with.’

  ‘OK. Here we go. Y.J. £2,000; S.P. £3,000; K.K. £1,000; G.J. £5,000; R.H.A. £2,500; U.H.R. £500; G.I. £5,000 –’

  ‘That’ll do. I’ll start on them and collect the others later if I need them. I know that if I try to deal with too many at once I’ll make a complete mess of it. OK. So Oxford’s a blackmailer and that was why he was killed. And that brings me to Formby Mitchell.’

  ‘Or Mitchell Formby.’

  ‘Whatever. I thought he had to be the murderer. I reckoned he was stealing the gear here and selling it back to the hospital to pocket the money in order to pay off Oxford. That was what made me sure Oxford was a blackmailer, even before I saw this printout. But then of course, Formby was killed.’

  ‘Inconsiderate of him. It spoiled a nice theory.’

  ‘Watch it, Hathaway.’

  ‘I mean it! It’s maddening to have a nice neat theory and see it ruined. It’s happened to me too often not to sympathize.’

  ‘Yes –’ She stopped then. ‘OK, that’s all I have to say. Now, what about you?’

  He leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, so far we’ve marched the same furrow. I agree with you that the figures on that printout relate to money obtained by blackmail. We know that Oxford’s official earnings and lifestyle were wildly out of step, so that’s a double assurance that that’s what the printout means.’

  ‘OK, now what? The man was murdered in a very odd fashion. Someone filled his bottom cream with poison – not a rare one, but an easily obtained one – and put it in his bathroom cabinet. That was because he or she expected that eventually he’d have a sore back end and would shove the cream in and hey presto, one dead Oxford.’

  He stopped and stared at her owlishly and she lifted her brows at him. ‘Well?’

  ‘So it wasn’t critical in terms of time, was it? The murderer didn’t mind when Oxford obligingly killed himself – as long as he did it eventually. So this was the crime of a person who’d suffered a long time from Oxford’s presence on this earth and was prepared to put in a bit longer if he had to, to cover any tracks. And come to think of it, had enough money to go on paying for that much longer, too.’

  ‘Which underlines the fact that the murderer had to be someone with a secret worth keeping.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Even if it was months before Oxford’s piles started bothering him again –’

  ‘The murderer could have counted on it being a frequent problem, maybe? Knew him well enough to know all his medical details?’

  ‘Possible, I suppose,’ she said. ‘So, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Well, the next question has to be who was able to get into that bathroom? The stuff had to be planted, but how and when? Once we know that we might have a better idea of who.’

  ‘Yes, I see that. What have you been able to discover?’

  ‘Not a lot. He liked to entertain, gave dinner parties and so forth, but when he did that, he used the other lavatory for his guests and his daily help. No one ever needed to go into his bedroom. We talked to the caterers he used – they were listed in his address book. That doesn’t mean guests didn’t see his bedroom and bathroom – I gather he was fond of taking people over the place and showing it off. But he always did it in a crowd so there was no way someone could sneak the cream into the bathroom without being seen. It wouldn’t be possible even if there was just the murderer and Oxford in there. Every time one of those cabinet doors is opened the whole room goes into conniption fits, the way the images shift and confuse you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said feelingly. ‘It made me feel dizzy.’

  ‘Quite. So, who could it have been? A special guest maybe. A lover?’

  There was a little silence and then she said, ‘He was bisexual.’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘HIV positive. There was no record of him ever having a blood transfusion and he never actually went abroad, in spite of the books he wrote. And anyway he –’

  ‘Don’t say he looked it. There’s no way you can tell just by appearance.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say that. Don’t be so prickly! I was just going to say the fact that he lived apart from his wife on close and friendly terms. I’ve come across that before. It’s an odd thing, but women in my experience are remarkably tolerant of blokes who share their love lives with other men rather than other women.’

  ‘Watch it. You’re beginning to sound like someone who trusts his intuition.’

  ‘Do me a favour! I’m quoting years of past experience. That’s a very different thing.’

  ‘Like hell it is. Intuition is what that is. Past experience, common sense, a quick eye and a fast brain. Add them together and you get intuition. Women are good at it. We’re clever, you see. Fast brains.’

  ‘Don’t you smirk at me! I still think it’s codswallop. Anyway, it’s my experience that told me he was bisexual. What about you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How do you know? Intuition again?’

  ‘I was told.’ She didn’t look at him and she felt rather than saw him stiffen.

  ‘Oh? Who did that?’

  She took a deep breath and now she did look at him. ‘I need to know. You told me that Toby Bellamy was a suspect. Is he still?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because he was having an affair with Felicity Oxford?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘Oh? How can you be sure of that?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘And why should I believe him? Why do you, come to that?’

  ‘Because Oxford was bisexual. A
nd Felicity Oxford preferred men like Oxford. She isn’t interested in sex, it seems. Never has been. But clearly she did have sex with her husband at some point because –’

  He was looking at her with his eyes bright and birdy again, his head to one side. ‘Because she’s HIV positive too,’ he said softly.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Toby Bellamy told you all this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And –’

  She tightened her jaw. ‘Yes, I believe him.’

  ‘Listen, this is a hard question and if you want to tell me to sling me ’ook I’ll understand. But is he soft-soaping you? Because he fancies you? I’d understand it if he did. You’re a very fanciable lady.’

  ‘None of that,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t you get personal.’

  ‘Who? Me? I just calls ’em the way I sees ’em. So tell me, could it be that he’s fooling you? That what he’s telling you is just, well, things he wants you to believe? Like that he isn’t having it off – that he isn’t playing around with Felicity Oxford?’

  She gazed at him with her lower lip caught between her teeth as all her doubts came thundering back on eager hooves. That night in his car she had thought she believed him. Now … ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it hell?’

  ‘Do you want me to find out for you?’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Can you?’

  ‘I can investigate Mrs Oxford again.’

  ‘Again?’

  He laughed. ‘Of course. You don’t think we haven’t talked to her in detail already? She’s the man’s wife, so of course we did. That’s how we know all about Bellamy seeing her so often. I have to say there’s no evidence that he’s wrong. She doesn’t have a lot of men friends – more female ones, in fact. Very devoted to her job.’

  ‘Ah yes, her job. The model agency.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like a real job, does it? Something for a rich woman to play around with, more like. That’s what I thought. But it seems to be a real business and she gets a good deal of work for her clients. Gets some of them married off, too.’