by Jim Kelly
Impatient, Dryden stood again, and scanned the wall posters. One showed an eye, bulging out in diagram, incisions marked at the side.
Graves Disease, read the caption: It can be treated.
You’d never forget the eyes: it’s what everyone had said. Dryden began to read the small print but the Portakabin shook suddenly as someone climbed the outside steps.
George Lutton was the wrong side of 15 stone, a bow tie accentuating the stretched white shirt over his stomach. His face was hairless and his cheeks had livid red spots, as if the exercise of crossing the hospital yard had been a significant challenge.
He crashed into his chair and adjusted his glasses.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, reading a note, and immediately began to pack away pen and documents into an attaché case. ‘I’m sorry. I know you rang but I really can’t help you now. Elizabeth and I separated in ’78. As you know, she died in ’89; she’d been ill for several years. By that time she had a new family, and so did I. So you see…’
‘It was about Paul Gedney.’
Lutton stood, taking an overcoat down from a wooden hat stand. ‘Indeed. But I don’t want to talk about Paul Gedney, Mr Dryden.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve never understood why your wife got involved.’
Lutton froze. ‘It’s almost impossible to slander the dead, Mr Dryden, but be careful. Involved in what?’
Luckily Dryden knew the law of slander better than Lutton. There were no witnesses, so he pressed on. ‘Paul Gedney stole drugs over a period of nine months during the winter of 1973–4. I understand that’s impossible to do without attracting attention – unless the records are falsified. Your wife was responsible for the records. She retired six weeks after the police inquiry became public. Did she really need the money?’
He walked away from Dryden towards the outer doors. ‘Why do you people always assume crime is about money?’
Lutton had a Jag, black and polished like a hearse. He struggled with the door.
‘It’ll be frozen,’ said Dryden. ‘De-icer?’
Lutton, angry now, walked to the rear and the boot flipped up automatically.
Dryden was thinking fast: there was something about Lutton’s indignation that was intensely personal, a loss of face perhaps, and dignity. He thought again about the unsatisfied smile of Elizabeth Lutton. ‘They had an affair, didn’t they?’ he asked.
Lutton straightened, holding a can of de-icer. Then he leant in close and Dryden caught the whiff of cigars. ‘Look. Can I suggest you fuck off. I consider your attempts to gain access to the surgery are improper. I am being harassed. If you do it again I shall make a formal complaint. I wish to get on. I have another clinic at Friday Bridge.’
‘She must have been worried when he disappeared,’ Dryden persisted. ‘Worried he’d get caught, and try to shift the blame. Did he get in touch?’
But Lutton had said enough; he reached up to close the boot but Dryden stopped him. It was packed with kit: sealed cellophane packages of medical equipment, a small carousel for dispensing drugs and an aluminium box, like a picnic cooler, with locks.
‘What’s that?’ said Dryden, touching the cold metallic surface.
Lutton sighed, and crashed the boot down. ‘Friday Bridge has a small A&E department for injuries – they’re short of blood, I run stuff out on clinic days. It’s a blood box. Now goodbye, Mr Dryden.’
43
Humph picked him up outside the hospital gates and drove in silence to the Eel’s Foot, parking up on the edge of the long dyke which ran to the horizon: a single white line of ice which seemed to separate the landscape into two equal halves of black, featureless peat. Its surface smoked in the setting sunlight, gently smudging the image of a swan which flew towards them along the arrow-straight track, one webbed foot occasionally touching the ice in its wake.
Dryden fetched beer and juice from the bar. The sun had gone, a vast lid of steel-grey cloud having slid over their heads from the north. A violent gust of wind rocked the Capri on its rusted springs.
The cabbie carefully retrieved a miniature bottle of tequila and added it to the orange juice. ‘It’s medicinal,’ he explained, belching.
‘In what sense?’ asked Dryden.
‘In the sense that it tastes like medicine,’ said Humph, adding a second.
Suddenly the ice storm struck, rain thrashing the windscreen and cutting visibility from ten miles to twenty feet in five seconds. As they watched, the water froze on the cab’s windows in opaque patterns. Dusk seemed close now, and Humph flicked on the vanity light over the passenger seat.
Humph checked his watch and fiddled with the radio knob. They listened patiently to the national news before it switched to local weather. Dryden’s mobile had been off since DI Reade’s unwelcome text. He flicked it back on and found a voice message from DI Parlour.
‘Mr Dryden. I’ve just had a brief chat with DI Jock Reade from Ely. I understand you know each other. I’d like to try that statement again, if it’s all right with you. Now, please. I’m at the camp, we’ve set up an incident room in the old dining hall. I’ll expect you. Frankly, if I don’t see you by dusk one of my officers will come and get you.’
Humph leant forward and turned up the radio volume ‘… and for East Anglia the Met Office has issued a severe weather warning. Freezing rain showers have reached the north coast of Norfolk and will deepen towards nightfall. Ground temperatures are likely to remain at minus 5 or lower, leading to widespread formation of ice on trees, overhead wires, rails, roads and other artificial surfaces. By mid-evening the storm front will have passed from coastal areas, with skies clearing, leading to severe freezing temperatures of minus 10 and below. Police in North Norfolk advise all motorists to stay off the roads unless their journey is vital. Conditions are already described as treacherous.’
‘Super,’ said Dryden. Humph killed the radio and resisted the language tape: an eloquent, and rare, offer of uninterrupted communication.
‘The camp’s still crawling,’ said the cabbie. ‘They want to know what I’ve been doing parked up on the beach.’
‘What did you tell ’em?’
‘The truth. That I was keeping an eye on Laura because someone had tried to kill you. I think the copper wants another word.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Dryden. ‘I may have overlooked mentioning it in my statement. So I’ll look forward to that.’
Dryden closed his eyes, trying to blot out the storm. ‘OK,’ he said to Humph. ‘Stick with me. I see some light at last…’ He slurped more beer and then balanced the pint on top of the glove compartment, spilling peanuts into the shallow plastic depression.
Humph folded his arms like a Buddha.
‘Paul Gedney is – how can I put this nicely – romantically attached to Elizabeth Lutton, Whittlesea District Hospital’s senior pharmacist. She’s in a marriage she will later escape, she’s thirty-five, or thereabouts. He’s fifteen years younger – and as far as we know a manipulative and damaged young man. This may not be his fault, but for the sake of the argument, who cares? So what does he see in her? It’s only a guess, but I reckon our Paul sees a way of lifting drugs out of the pharmacy without being caught. So Elizabeth is a means to an end; in fact, everyone he knows is probably a means to an end, a fact only marginally more palatable when you remember the object of his little money-raising scheme was to pay for medical treatment for his adopted mother. Then it all goes wrong. The police find some of Gedney’s customers reeling around the low spots of Whittlesea and the Fen towns and they’re prepared to name their supplier. He gets to hear on the grapevine they’re going to bust him, so he does a runner.’
‘And ends up at the Dolphin,’ said Humph, attempting to winch a four-inch-wide crisp into his mouth without breaking it.
‘Indeed. He tries to tap his friends for some money is my guess – which they refuse, and instead offer him refuge for the night. It’s just possible Ruth Connor – who is another one of his former conquests
– decides that he deserves more help than that, and she slips him the combination to the office safe. Anyway, the plan goes wrong and Chips catches him and wallops him with the stapler. What happens next? My guess is he rides east on the coast road and then doubles back to Lighthouse Cottage, where he dumps the bike – it’s still there. Then I reckon, once the police have been and gone, he tracks down Ruth Connor. And that’s when they see their real chance.’
Dryden slapped the dashboard and corralled some nuts. Outside, the lights of the Eel’s Foot came on, a string of Christmas bulbs swinging violently in the wind.
Humph shrugged, but for once played the game. ‘Which was?’
‘It’s perfect. Two people – two problems. Paul Gedney is on the run and needs to disappear. Ruth Connor is stuck with a husband who – even by his own admission – wasn’t happy living in the same world as she was. Emotionally, he’s a ten-year-old, with a fragile personality which can break when exposed to the slightest stress. Next stop the funny farm. So Ruth and Paul Gedney figure it out: Chips has got the robbery on the record, the police have got the stapler as exhibit number one if they ever track down the thief. The lovers decide to fit up Chips Connor for Paul Gedney’s murder. That way, Chips goes to jail and Paul Gedney gets a new life.’
‘How do they fake the murder scene?’ said Humph, hooked now, despite himself.
‘Blood. Lots of it. Gedney is a trained nurse – or at least part trained. He’s done a hundred blood transfusions. She sets him up in the boat – the Curlew– over in the marsh, on the riverbank, well out of the way. The police aren’t looking anyway, they think he’s beggared off by motorbike like Chips said. Five pints of blood – that’s all it takes. He had nearly six weeks – plenty of time for his own body to have replaced the blood. He stores it in a blood box – a metal container which preserves it at the right temperature. The technicalities are beyond me, but it’s not rocket science, all he needs is a generator.’
Humph looked out the driver’s side window, unconvinced. ‘Why’d he cut himself up with the knife?’
Dryden covered his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
Humph, rallying, filled in the gaps. ‘So once they’ve got the blood they choose a spot – the old huts are perfect. Then they spill it all in one go and give it a few days to dry so the police aren’t tempted to give it the full forensic treatment?’
Dryden shook his head. ‘I’ve read the trial reports. The examination on site was done by the local man – there’s no way they would have spotted the different ages of the blood samples taken at the scene. They’d take three, six, whatever, but only to make sure it was all from one body. That’s it. Standard practice.’
‘Then they set up the other stuff – clothes, hairs… how about the fingerprints?’ asked Humph.
‘Every item with a print was movable – the clever bit was the iron bed end, but if you look in the old huts you can see they’re easy to take apart. They knew where Chips had been working. It was easy enough, and they had so much time. Chips was out of the way by then – at the clinic – so they could choose their moment. And they had time to plant evidence on his fishing boat too – so it looked like he’d dumped the body at sea.’
Dryden took the glasses back and Humph fired up the Capri, but they didn’t move. ‘Then what?’ said the cabbie.
‘Good question. He got away – right away. Gedney has to think fast. He’s got a face no one can forget. The police have got a picture, and within a week every copper in the east of England has got a copy. OK – he’s got some cash, perhaps a lot of cash.’ He paused, sensing he was close to something. ‘He may have touched Lutton again. She’s still got a job, although by now everyone’s crawling all over the pharmacy records, so she’s heading for the best exit she can negotiate that protects her pension. So he leans on her.’
Humph burped, rocking the Capri. ‘Is that where he got the kit, the blood box, the transfusion gear?’
‘Brilliant. Exactly. Elizabeth Lutton. It has to be. A quick call, a plea for help not very subtly wrapped up in a threat. The blood box, transfusion gear, even a fresh supply of blood for a full transfusion.’
‘Blackmail,’ said Humph. He squirted water on the windscreen automatically and the ice cleared, but re-formed quickly between swipes of the wipers. ‘Blimey. We’ll be lucky to get back in this.’
Dryden felt the blood draining from his face. ‘You’re a genius,’ he said, turning to the cabbie.
‘Piss off,’ said Humph, sensing an unpardonable excursion into sarcasm.
‘No. It was blackmail all right. But Lutton’s husband said something to me earlier back at his clinic – “Why do you people always assume crime is about money?” Well, he’s right. This time it wasn’t. He didn’t want money. He wanted something else, and what if Gedney wanted both the Luttons to help?’
Dryden let the glove compartment fall open and twisted the cap off another malt.
By the time they reached the camp gates he was sure; but he needed to be safer than that. ‘Drop me over there, beyond the lights by reception – I’ll meet you in the dunes at the usual place – give me twenty minutes.’
The ice storm was already causing havoc: a telegraph pole lay across the path to reception, a ball of tangled ice at its head. A bare apple tree stood encased in ice and as Dryden passed a crack rang out like a gunshot as one of the branches sheared away from the main trunk and smashed to the ground like a chandelier. Looking up, Dryden could see the power lines clearly despite the falling night, a luminescent white wire hung with icicles. One half of the canopy over the entrance doors had buckled under the weight of ice above and only a few of the carriage lamps on the chalets still shone.
The rain fell like pellets, tapping at his skull and bouncing high from the hard surfaces of the tarmac and path.
The foyer was empty, the buzz of Muzak replaced by a live local radio broadcast.
‘… and residents in Whittlesea report a complete loss of power to the Eastfields Estate. A series of accidents has closed the main bridge into the town and police now advise all motorists who are able to leave their cars and find refuge for tonight.’
The lights flickered once and then regained power as Muriel Coverack appeared from the back office.
‘How you getting home?’ asked Dryden.
‘I’m not. I took a busload back a few hours ago but I’ve got a chalet here for the night. And a free meal. Big deal, eh?’
Dryden nodded and headed for the internet café, where he extracted a large espresso from the vending machine.
Muriel followed him in. ‘The police left a message. They said if I saw you to make sure they knew. You’ve got to go to the dining hall. They’re all down there – there’s a mobile kitchen and everything.’
The sound of rain clattering against the roof filled the foyer with noise like static.
‘Thanks,’ said Dryden, not looking up from the computer.
‘Shall I tell them, then?’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Dryden. ‘I’m on my way.’
The Google search box came up and he punched in the name of Lutton’s private clinic. The website was adorned with a picture of the building, a Queen Anne house in lush grounds with the kind of gravel drive over which only polished cars crunch. There was a Q & A section on Graves Disease, and a cross-link to an NHS site which listed the various symptoms. It was a thyroid condition which could lead to fluctuating sex drive, weight loss, intolerance to heat and sweating. Most symptoms could be kept under control with steroids, but the treatment brought with it side-effects – diabetes, high blood pressure, psychosis, cardiovascular problems and cataracts. Dryden tried another site for Graves Disease and found a more extensive list of symptoms, including proptosis. He clicked on it and found himself looking at a series of before and after mug shots.
‘Bingo,’ said Dryden. ‘Pop eye.’
He read on quickly. Bulging eyes were one of the commonest symptoms of the disease. In most cases patients were treated with st
eroids or had part of the thyroid gland removed. But if the bulging of the eye continued an orbital decompression – surgery – could be undertaken, an operation which results in the eye sitting back in its socket. The pictures were graphic: in the ‘before’ version one young woman stared out, the whites completely encircling the iris in both eyes, the lids seemingly unblinking, the edges inflamed and red. In the ‘after’ version the bulging of the eyes, and the swelling of the face around the eye sockets, was gone. She looked like a different person. If you’d been her brother or sister you’d have walked past her in the street.
Dryden heard voices from the office behind the reception counter, so he hit a printout button and grabbing the sheet ran out into the dusk, down through the camp. The floodlight by the amusement park was still working and showed that the helter-skelter had buckled, the top third sinking down and skewing round. A line of changing booths had collapsed and several telegraph wires lay rigid on the frosted grass. A uniformed PC stood guard down by the water’s edge, the scene-of-crime tapes flapping like prayer flags in the wind.
As Dryden looked to the distant lines of white surf just visible at sea the rain stopped. Within seconds the air was completely still and champagne-chilled, the only sound the high-pitched hum of the pylons overhead and the occasional crack of tortured wood. The storm had passed inland, revealing a planetarium of stars. At sea red and green navigation lights came and went.
He thought about the face of Paul Gedney. He thought about thirty years of natural ageing, layered onto a face transformed by an operation to cure the symptoms of Graves Disease. He saw faces, calling them up from the twisting story which had unfurled since the day he had climbed the steps of High Park Flats to the home of Declan McIlroy: and in each he searched for the pale fleeting image of the thief.
