First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘A lot of people feel that way,’ George said. ‘But they still need to know, so they come and ask me to do the tests. I’ve got a lot of secret ones hidden away in the lab, together with the results of all the other ones they’ve done there. It’s something I think is interesting and I ought to hang on to them. Got them safely locked up, of course.’ She nodded and beamed as drunkenly as she could without becoming a caricature of inebriation and lifted her glass to her lips again. She would have liked to drink water but that would have ruined the effect. ‘I’ll never tell, of course. But it’s my guess some of these people’d go ape if they thought anyone else had found out about them, and that I had kept their old results.’

  ‘No one need “go ape”, as you put it, if they know the facts,’ Dieter said in the hardest voice she had ever heard him use. ‘There is no proof that there is any need to fear HIV to the extent some people have been made to. It is one of my –’

  ‘Not now, Charles,’ Beatrice Dieter said loudly. ‘I’ve had quite enough of this subject for some time. And we have to go now. I have an early lecture tomorrow and need my sleep. Goodnight, Dr Barnabas. Very good of you to include us. See to it that you keep that plant we gave you well watered. It dies easily without attention. Goodnight.’ And she swept out, not even looking back at Charles who, after a moment, patted his lips with his napkin and stood up. ‘I had no idea it was so late,’ he said stiffly and followed her out.

  ‘I must go too,’ Herne said and George looked at him and felt a lurch in her belly. He was very white, almost greyish, and for a moment she thought he was ill. But then as the colour slowly came back she saw only that he was furiously angry. Or sick with fright. Or … Well, she couldn’t be sure, but some emotion had him held tightly.

  ‘Come along, Carole,’ he said. ‘I have an early start tomorrow too. Thank you, Dr Barnabas. Please see to it that your caterers leave it all as they found it.’ And then they too were gone.

  The rest of the party sat uneasily for a moment and then talk started once more, a little jerkily, but at least it started, and again it was good sensible Kate who was responsible, turning to Felicity to engage her in bright and rather silly conversation about gardening and George thought, She’s chosen that because she thinks I can’t put my foot in it there. Oh, God, will they ever forgive me, these nice people? If they’re nice people. Which of them has killed twice? Somebody has.

  Toby came and sat down beside her, where the departure of the other guests had made it possible, and murmured, ‘What are you up to?’ in her ear.

  She turned to look at him, trying to seem bleary. ‘Mmm? Hope you’re having a nice party. I thought maybe you wouldn’t come, seeing it’s mine and you were so angry with me.’

  ‘I don’t hold grudges. I ought to, but I don’t.’

  ‘Tha’s nice,’ she said, smiling a little crookedly and considering a hiccup.

  He wasn’t impressed. ‘You’re no more smashed than I’m the Queen of bloody Sheba,’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’

  She thought fast, jockeying for time. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I said you’re up to something; being deliberately rude to people; setting up hares that might run. Look at what you’ve done to poor old Herne!’

  ‘Poor old –’ she began and then subsided, biting her lip.

  ‘I knew you were foxing. I ask again, – What the hell are you up to?’

  ‘None of your business.’ She looked covertly at Felicity, who seemed almost animated in her talk with Kate, who showed no sign of anxiety at all. ‘It’s my party and –’

  ‘It’s not even your birthday,’ he said and she stared at him.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Went to find out. Wanted to check on your actual birth date so that I’d get the right present for the right day, believe it or not. Told the personnel girl it was for some research I was doing.’ He shook his head. ‘Some of ’em’ll believe anything. So for the last time, what is all this?’

  She gave in. ‘I was trying to see if I could push this case on a bit.’ She dropped her voice even further, though it wasn’t necessary. Sam and Oliver and Jerry had returned to the subject of football and Hattie had joined in the talk about gardens and now children, and no one was paying them any attention at all. ‘I want to show Gus Hathaway what I can do when I’m given the chance.’

  He looked at her closely. ‘You seem to worry a lot over this Hathaway. Is he someone special to you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid. I just work with him,’ she said but she was uneasy and suspected that the fact showed on her face. She’d never been any good at hiding her thoughts, dammit.

  ‘Well, that’s as may be. Just tell me, what did you think you were going to get out of that last display?’

  She thought hard and then surrendered her common sense, or at least some of it. There was still a possibility that Toby Bellamy was the guilty person she had once feared he was, despite his detailed explanation of why he couldn’t be suspected; still a possibility that she was playing into his hands by talking to him. But her gut instinct – intuition? jeered her inner self in Gus’s tone of voice – loosened her tongue a little.

  ‘I think Matthew Herne could have been the one who … Well, he’s my main suspect.’

  ‘Matthew?’ He stared. ‘Why?’

  She sighed. ‘Why should I tell you? You’re still one of Gus’s suspects and so –’

  ‘And I explained to you the other night why it couldn’t be me, and you can’t argue with that. There’s no logical reason why it should be, so don’t be so silly.’

  ‘I’m not being silly. I’ll tell Gus. Then I’ll consider telling you. Fair enough?’

  ‘No, it’s not –’ he began and then Miles was behind her.

  ‘Was there something wrong, Doctor? I was sorry to see Professor Dieter didn’t finish his pudding. It’s one he likes a lot, but he left so quickly.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you about this some other time,’ Toby said, his mouth rather tight. ‘You’re being singularly – Well, as I say, tomorrow probably, when I see you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said as coolly as she could and turned to Miles as Toby went back down the table to lean over Felicity, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I hope everything was all right.’

  ‘It’s fine, Miles,’ she said and smiled at him. ‘Everything was just fine. The duck was great. I’m sorry people left early, but it wasn’t because of the food, I do assure you. Look, let me have the final bill as soon as possible, will you? I hate to leave debts unpaid.’

  ‘I will,’ he promised and turned to go. ‘I’ll fetch some more coffee if people want it.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said regretfully as Felicity came towards her, followed by Hattie and Sam. ‘I think we’re breaking up.’

  And so they were. It was barely eleven-fifteen but they were murmuring of early starts the next day and thanks for thinking of them (which made her shame come back as she remembered how devious she had been with them all) and wishing her happy birthday (which made her feel worse than ever) and as she shook male hands and kissed warm female cheeks, and a little to her surprise was thoroughly kissed on her own cheeks by Sam and Oliver, a thought nagged and twisted at the back of her mind, filling her with unease and a sense of something not quite right, something not dealt with properly, something she had missed that she shouldn’t have done …

  Jerry was the last to go, smiling at her broadly with what was a genuinely tipsy expression, thanking her fulsomely for including him, and threatening to topple over into sentimentality at any moment. She despatched him as smartly as she could and then turned back in some relief to Miles and Stephen who were assiduously and unobtrusively clearing the table.

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ she said, moving to the door and then suddenly stopped as memory exploded in her mind. It had been the sight of Miles’s face that had triggered it and she hadn’t realized till now what it was that had so surprised her.

  ‘Miles!’ she sai
d. ‘You said that the dessert – the pudding was one Professor Dieter liked?’

  ‘Yes, doctor,’ Miles said. ‘It seemed a pity, he hardly touched it.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How did you know that?’

  Miles looked at Stephen who lifted one eyebrow a millimetre and seemed to nod slightly and Miles turned back to her. ‘We’ve cooked for him before.’

  ‘Oh!’ Her hope, which had started to unfurl itself like a great green fern, faltered. ‘Here, I suppose. At Old East.’

  ‘Oh, no. This is the first time we’ve worked right in the hospital. I hope we will again. If you like what we did, maybe you’ll tell other people here?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said impatiently. ‘Of course. But if not here, where?’

  ‘At Mr Oxford’s flat,’ Miles said. ‘His – um – his bachelor dinners, you know? Lots of times. Not that guests ever noticed us. But then they wouldn’t. Richard liked us to get things ready and keep out of the way and then tidy up. The Professor wouldn’t know us because we kept well back. But we know him because we saw them all. We know everyone who used to go to those parties, don’t we, Stephen?’ He smiled sweetly at George and she saw it, the bright and intermittent spark of malice like a firefly on a Tuscan hillside. ‘Oh, yes. We know them all.’

  29

  ‘What’s this then? A Bring and Buy in aid of the Distressed Pathologists’ Home?’ Gus stood in the middle of the room looking at the piles of paper and ribbons on the floor beside the desk and the goods on top of it.

  George reddened and pushed out of sight the outrageous scarlet lace underwear of a very Soho sort that had been Jerry’s offering. ‘Presents,’ she mumbled. ‘Had to get them opened so that I could sort them out.’

  ‘Presents? Is it happy birthday time, then? You should have said.’

  ‘Dammit, no it isn’t. That is, it sort of was … It’s all a mistake. Well, not exactly a mistake. Anyway, it isn’t my birthday so don’t you start.’

  ‘Whatever it is maybe people are trying to tell you something.’ He picked up the big bottle of highly scented bath oil that stood on the edge of her desk. ‘I wouldn’t listen if I were you. You stick to your Joy. It suits you.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Gus,’ she said, and pushed the piles of soap and chocolates and pot plants to one side. ‘I’ll deal with that later. Look, I have to talk to you.’

  ‘So you said on the phone,’ he said and pulled the spare chair away from the wall and plopped himself down on it, turning it so that he could sit astride and rest his folded arms on the back. ‘Broken the code, have you?’

  She grimaced. ‘No. It’s a bastard, that code. I’ve twiddled and fiddled but it’s getting me nowhere. Like I said, you’ll have to use the computer. No, this is something else.’ She stopped and looked at him and then away, not sure how to go on and he laughed.

  ‘Been playing the brilliant amateur, have you? Picked up a few clues my clodhopping coppers missed and want to save my face the way you tell me? I wouldn’t worry, ducks. There’s not much we miss even if you don’t tell me what you’re up to.’

  ‘It’s nothing of the sort! But I have been thinking and – er – well, I’ve actually done something too.’ There was a short silence during which he looked at her with raised brows and she sighed and said, ‘Oh, dammit.’

  ‘That won’t help. Whatever you’ve done, ’fess up.’

  ‘I’ll start with the good news first. I think I know who it is who killed both Oxford and Formby.’

  ‘Ah? So you’re sure Formby was killed then? He didn’t slip?’

  ‘It’s not likely, is it? He was used to moving around on that structure. There was no reason why he should suddenly have an accident. And it’s too much to think an accident would happen so conveniently so soon after a murder and so soon after he was shown to be a thief with a record.’

  ‘I have to agree. So where do we go from here?’

  ‘I think …’ She swallowed. ‘I think the accomplice we talked about – remember? You agreed that the chances were Formby had an accomplice he was stealing for or with – well, it’s Matthew Herne.’

  He looked at her without expression. ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘There are all sorts of pointers, and something I only remembered this morning. I’ll tell you about that first. You see, Kate Sayers – she’s in the renal unit, uses kidney machines and so on – had to buy some gear for her department. She did all the research, sorted it all out with the rep of the British firm she wanted to buy from, sent the papers over to Herne for signing in the usual way, and he suddenly did an about face and told her he’d order it all himself from a cheaper source abroad. She thought it was just to save money, but I reckon he was about to pull another scam. I’m not sure how, but it seems likely. Maybe it’s easier to get unmarked goods from abroad so no one would notice when the stuff was stolen and then returned as new gear. We would never have known here if it hadn’t been for the paint on the microscope.’

  ‘I see. So you think that proves Herne was the one who was stealing and using Formby? When you told Formby you knew what was going on –’

  ‘Formby told Herne he wanted out and tried a bit of blackmail on his own account, said he’d split on Herne unless he let him keep his job and covered up for him –’

  ‘– So Herne killed Formby to protect himself –’

  ‘– and had already killed Oxford because he was being blackmailed by him. That was why he got involved with the thefts in the first place. To pay off Oxford.’

  ‘It sounds seductive,’ Gus said after a moment. ‘But there’s a huge hole in it. How did Herne get the digitalis into the cream and into Oxford’s bathroom?’

  She was silent for a moment and then grinned. ‘It seems a very big hole, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, maybe not.’ He got up and pulled off his overcoat. ‘It’s getting hot in here, or I’m getting over-excited.’ He sat down again, walking his chair forwards in little jerks so that he was sitting closer to her. ‘Maybe we can find a way he could have got to Oxford’s place?’

  She grinned even more widely. ‘I think I have.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Last night, I gave a party.’

  ‘And didn’t invite me? Shame on you.’

  ‘And pretended to drink too much.’ He was quiet now and watching her. ‘I thought I could start a few hares, you know?’

  ‘Did you succeed?’

  ‘I thought I’d failed at first. I’m still not sure. But then – well, let me tell you in order, hmm? At the party I tried to see what would happen if I talked about hookers. Herne got very bothered.’

  ‘What was the point of that?’

  ‘I thought perhaps Oxford had been blackmailing Herne about his wife. If she really was a hooker – and it was you who put the idea into my head –’

  ‘Then you did pick up on that? Good on you. Yeah, she was a Tom.’

  She was diverted. ‘A what?’

  He smiled. ‘A hooker, ducks. English style.’

  ‘Oh, well, anyway, I thought that could have been what Herne wanted kept quiet.’

  ‘It makes sense. So you talked about hookers? In the middle of your party?’

  ‘It was awful. I don’t suppose any of them’ll ever want to speak to me again. But it seemed to me a good way to try it.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘He got very uptight. White as a sheet, very bothered.’

  ‘That was stupid, you know that?’ He sounded very sharp now. ‘If you really think this man killed two people where’s the bleedin’ sense in letting him think you know it? Do you want to be pushed off a building site or be plugged with God knows what?’

  ‘I’ve done worse than that.’ She tried to sound flippant. ‘After I talked about hookers I talked about blood tests for HIV.’

  ‘HI … Why?’

  She sighed a little heavily. ‘I thought you’d have worked that one out for yourself. It could be that Oxford was killed because he
was HIV positive and –’

  ‘I thought it was because he was a blackmailer?’

  ‘– was using his knowledge of other people’s HIV status to blackmail them with.’

  Gus shook his head. ‘That makes no sense to me. First of all, the fact he knew he was positive wouldn’t mean he knew about other people being positive. And secondly, isn’t it bad enough to know you’ve got HIV? I mean, what can be worse than thinking you’re going to die any minute? So what if people try to blackmail you? It won’t do ’em any good for long, or any worse harm to the person being blackmailed than he’s already suffered.’

  ‘You’re quite wrong on that second bit. Not everyone who’s HIV positive’s going to die any minute. The latency period – the time between getting the infection and showing symptoms of AIDS – can be ten years or more. And even people with AIDS are living longer and longer. By the time some of the newly infected people are at risk of disease there could be an answer, just as there was with syphilis and the other sexual diseases. Plenty of people were blackmailed in the past over syphilis, because that was a killer in its day. So I don’t see why a man shouldn’t be blackmailing over it now. And as for the first bit, well, yes, I see what you mean. But he might know someone else’s HIV status because he’d passed the virus to them. He was bisexual, remember, and very randy from all the signs. That flat! He could have been thoroughly promiscuous and actually created his own blackmail victims. And anyway –’ She hesitated and then frowned. ‘That’s odd.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘It’s a thought I just had. No, it’s ridiculous …’

  ‘You can still spit it out. There’s no one here but me to laugh at you.’

  ‘I just thought … Listen, there’s something else. After the guests had gone, the caterers I’d hired – well, I found out something that startled me a bit.’

  ‘Caterers?’

  ‘They’re called Castor and Pollux.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Danbo and Chapman? I know them. They do most of the local big dos.’