The Lazarus Hotel

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Coincidence,’ muttered Will, but there was no conviction in it.

  Sheelagh shook her head. ‘It wasn’t the first time, Will. It’s no big deal, all right? Lots of girls go for other girls. It doesn’t mean they’re life-long lesbians. For some it’s a phase you grow through. I didn’t know about Cathy, I hardly saw her after we grew up, she could have changed. But she had the hots for me when we were fifteen. It didn’t go anywhere because it wasn’t my idea of fun, but she made it pretty clear it was hers.’

  ‘Then – what about me?‘

  ‘Will, I don’t know. But you could be the only man she ever loved. Maybe that’s something to be proud of.’

  ‘If you’re right,’ Richard said pensively, ‘other things start to make sense. The state she was in that last year. Larry ruled out drugs because she wasn’t getting them from him, she wasn’t getting them in the locker-room and he trusted her doctor. But Tessa could have got them for her.’

  ‘She must have taken urine tests,’ said Tariq, chewing the inside of his cheek. ‘If she was on steroids it would have shown up.’

  But Larry knew two answers to that. ‘You can use a blocking agent if you understand the chemistry well enough. I dare say a doctor could have helped her with that too. And sometimes you can fix it so that it’s not your sample they test. The procedures aren’t foolproof. Everyone’s heard of samples being switched or interfered with. And by this time Cathy was no longer winning. She could have got someone to help her out, especially when there was nothing at stake. People would have felt sorry for her when she was losing who wouldn’t have helped her win that way.’

  ‘Steroids?’ asked Tariq.

  ‘Going off how she was. They build bulk, strength and aggression. She certainly got bigger – I thought it was the work she was putting in – and she was strong. It was her judgement that was the problem, on court and off. You must have seen how angry she got, how trivial irritations sent her into orbit. That was new. I never had a problem with her temper till then. I put it down to frustration, but only because I didn’t think it could be steroids.’

  Richard said slowly, ‘If Joe knew this – if he knew half of this – he’d think it motive enough for murder. His daughter’s lover supplied her with stuff that wrecked her head and her career, then left her to fall apart alone. I’d want to kill someone who treated my child like that.’

  Will hadn’t come to terms with this, was dealing with it by shifting into a kind of professional detachment so that he could consider the facts stripped of their emotional burden. ‘So when Joe woke up he saw Tariq dozing in the chair by the door and Tessa by the bed. He got up, took the lemonade bottle and the torch, and hit Tariq because he was the biggest danger. The noise woke Tessa so he hit her too – not with the bottle, that was in pieces. He’s a big man, his fists would do.

  ‘Then he waited and listened. But we’d heard nothing and no one left the conference room. So he hauled Tariq out of his way, dragged Tessa to the lift, opened the doors and pushed her through. She didn’t scream so maybe she was already dead. She hit the gondola so hard the whole side broke away.’ A tic flickered under his eye. It could as easily have broken up the last time something hit it.

  ‘Probably he intended to go back for Tariq and Miriam. But he heard me opening the conference-room door so he hid in the shaft. He didn’t have to climb. All he had to do was get on to the track and the lift doors closed to hide him. He stayed there while we searched. Hell, he may still be there. Or maybe he climbed out as soon as we came in here.’

  There was a long silence. Nobody challenged his hypothesis. Nobody offered to check it by looking round outside. Eventually Sheelagh said, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We go back to the conference room, we take Miriam with us, and we stay together. We barricade the door, and we don’t answer it for any reason whatsoever.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Carrying her across to the conference room finally edged Miriam into a kind of rudimentary wakefulness. She asked in a weak voice what was going on; she asked for Esme Venables, who held her hand and made reassuring noises while they got her settled. She complained that her head hurt; but with her hand halfway to showing where, forgot what she was doing and, frowning, remarked critically on the state of the conference room.

  ‘Ask who hit her.’ The thought was in everyone’s mind but they waited for Sheelagh to voice it. The group had become a gestalt, Richard thought, a single entity comprised of multiple individuals each fulfilling a particular function. Will was its brain, Sheelagh its voice, Tariq its conscience. He himself seemed to have been cast as the group’s man of action, which was hilarious when you remembered why he came here in the first place. But then, they’d all plumbed reserves they didn’t know they had to cope with this. It was as if Joe, or fate, had deliberately created situations in which they could redeem their betrayal of Cathy Beacham by pulling out all the stops for one another.

  Mrs Venables hesitated. ‘I don’t want to upset her. She’s been unconscious twenty-four hours. I’m sure we shouldn’t be bothering her with that.’

  ‘I think we have to,’ said Tariq. ‘It’s important to know what we’re dealing with. Ask her. If it upsets her we’ll back off.’

  But it was already too late. While they were discussing it Miriam gave a sigh like a sounding grampus, turned on her side and went back to sleep. Tariq shrugged. ‘Oh well, just a thought.’

  Though there were hours of darkness ahead no one wanted to sleep; nor were they in the mood for small talk. They huddled under the duvets for warmth, thought of the furniture they’d piled behind the door for comfort, then they just sat. An hour dragged by.

  Without preamble, but with something startling about the way she dropped the remark into what had seemed a compact of silence, Mrs Venables said, ‘I once worked for a family whose son was diabetic.’

  The people around her stirred from the dreary repose into which they had sunk. Richard straightened so abruptly he bumped his head on the wall behind him. For some seconds no one knew how or whether to respond. Then Larry let out a gust of laughter that, if not quite a spontaneous expression of joyous camaraderie, was better than nothing. ‘Did you?’ he chuckled. ‘Did you really?’

  She gave an offended little sniff. ‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’

  ‘No – no,’ said Larry airily, ‘I was just sitting here in the dark wishing someone’d start telling anecdotes.’

  For a moment it seemed she’d been embarrassed into silence again. But Esme Venables was not easily intimidated. She said stiffly, ‘I mention it for a reason.’

  ‘You were thinking of Joe,’ said Sheelagh.

  ‘There’s something awry about that. I’m no expert, you mind, but I do remember how it was with Simon. Now, he was a teenager and I know the disease is different in older people. Even so, I don’t see how …’

  ‘What’s bothering you?’ Will asked patiently.

  There was a pause while she ordered her thoughts. Then: ‘Simon was about fifteen when I first went there. He was sensible about his insulin, could judge for himself when he was going to need more or less. The odd time he got it wrong he knew what was happening and took the appropriate measures. Most of the time he was like any other teenage boy.

  ‘But there was always the risk of an incident so everyone in the house had to know what to watch for. The main thing to know was, there are two kinds of coma. You get one when you haven’t had enough insulin – you missed a shot, maybe, or you need more because you’re poorly. That’s a diabetic coma. And you get another kind if you take too much insulin, or you don’t eat enough sugars and carbohydrates to balance it. Or maybe you’ve been busy and used up more that way. That’s hypoglycaemia – sugar-lack coma.

  ‘You have to know the difference because insulin will cure the first but make the second worse. You could kill a hypoglycaemic diabetic by assuming all he needed was his insulin.’

  They had listened to humour her. Now she could feel their int
erest sharpening. Will said, ‘How do you tell them apart?’

  ‘It isn’t difficult if you know what to look for. A diabetic coma comes on slowly, starting with nausea. Then the patient gets drowsy, his breathing slows down and he loses consciousness. His breath smells sweet and his skin’s dry and flushed. With too little sugar the situation’s more dramatic. It comes on quickly. He’s sweaty, shaky and agitated. If the situation isn’t resolved he becomes confused and drowsy. Then he starts convulsing.’ She waited for someone to comment but no one did. It was a text-book description of Joe’s condition when they found him.

  The housekeeper sighed, clearly thinking them very dim. She explained as if to a class of six-year-olds. ‘If Mr Lockhead was suffering from hypoglycaemia, why did Dr McNaught give him insulin?’

  The silence quickened with serious thinking. There were little grunts as people started to say something and then stopped. Will’s was the first intelligent response. ‘How sure are you about this?’

  ‘About the symptoms of diabetic and hypoglycaemic comas? I am sure. When a child’s life depends on it you have to be. Besides, there’s a mnemonic – the first letters. Dry skin means Diabetic coma, Sweaty skin means it’s Sugar-lack. Mr Lockhead was sweating. Why would a doctor give him more of what was making him ill?’

  ‘Why did you wait till now to mention this?’ Larry’s voice was harsh and combative.

  ‘There’s been so much going on,’ Mrs Venables said apologetically. ‘It was only now, thinking about it, that it struck me as odd. I tried to tell myself I misunderstood but I didn’t. Mr Lockhead was sweating. And Dr McNaught said she was giving him insulin.’

  ‘It sounds such an elementary mistake,’ said Sheelagh, puzzled. ‘Would a doctor get that wrong?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Mrs Venables.

  ‘Then what are you saying? Tessa wasn’t a GP?’

  ‘Oh, she was a GP all right. I’ve been with Dr Graves for ten years and most of her friends are medical people. You can spot a doctor at ten paces in a coal-hole. Mrs McNaught couldn’t have been anything else. And she diagnosed the diabetes, which was the hard bit. It’s not something a layman would guess from sweating and confusion.’

  ‘If it wasn’t a mistake,’ Tariq said slowly, not wanting to consider it and not daring not to, ‘what was it?’

  But Mrs Venables had said all she intended to. She didn’t know what it meant and wasn’t prepared to speculate. But it had struck her as odd, and if they’d shared their misgivings from the start they might not have been in their current situation.

  ‘Could she have intended to disable him?’ ventured Richard. ‘We were pretty desperate. Maybe she thought it was the only way we’d be safe till he could be locked up.’

  ‘Then why not say so?’ Tariq pushed the wreckage of his pony-tail off his face with rough fingers. ‘It wasn’t unreasonable in the circumstances. He was dangerous. We were entitled to do anything necessary to protect ourselves. Why pretend she was treating him?’

  ‘Maybe she thought we’d object,’ suggested Richard. ‘It was a pretty extreme way to keep the guy out of action. I mean, people die of diabetes. If she had insulin in her bag, surely to God she’d some sort of sedative?’

  Larry was the first to reach, or at least to put into words, the conclusion they were all trying to avoid. ‘Perhaps she wanted to do more than sedate him. Perhaps she wanted him dead.’

  ‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Tariq in disgust.

  ‘Think about it. Mrs V knows that giving insulin to a diabetic who’s short of sugar would be life-threatening and she only worked in a family with diabetes. Tessa was a doctor: she must have known. She didn’t say anything because, with Miriam unconscious, she didn’t expect anyone to notice. It’s a fluke that someone did.’

  ‘Why would she want to kill him?’

  ‘Because she knew what we’ve just worked out – that he had a bloody good reason to want to kill her!’

  ‘Because she was his daughter’s lover?’

  ‘Because she got Cathy started on the crap that finished her career and then walked out on her,’ snarled Larry. ‘Maybe none of us has much reason to feel proud of ourselves, but Tessa really did fuck her up and chuck her out. If anyone’s to blame for Cathy’s suicide it was Tessa.’

  Will had the scent of his natural quarry, the significant line of inquiry. ‘If we’re right about this, or even most of it, Joe would be a danger to her as long as he lived. If he was arrested for what he’d done he’d tell the police why he did it, all the details would come out, and that would mean the end of Tessa’s career, maybe her marriage, maybe criminal charges. It could be motive enough for murder.’

  ‘Attempted murder, anyway.’ Sheelagh’s voice was brittle. ‘She didn’t succeed, did she? Even if that’s what she intended, what happened is that Joe woke up, brained Tariq and chucked her down the lift shaft.’ She seemed to hear herself then because she stopped with a sharp intake of breath. When she began again her tone was sober. ‘Whatever she intended, whatever she did, she paid for it.’

  Will murmured, ‘Do we in fact know that?’

  In the darkness everyone stared at where his voice was coming from. ‘What do you mean? Of course we do.’

  ‘No,’ he explained carefully. ‘What we know is that we’ve got one broken bottle, one dizzy guard, two missing persons and some long hairs in the lift doors. We’ve put a certain interpretation on that and we may very well be right. But is it the only possible interpretation?’

  Richard glimpsed the ghost of what he was proposing but saw no reason to make it easy for him. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Will sighed. He suspected Richard knew exactly; maybe the others did too. He felt he was being used as a kind of mental Rottweiler, someone to do their dirty thinking for them. ‘Going off the bare facts, Tessa did something extraordinary and professionally indefensible. And she did it without the knowledge or consent of anyone else.

  ‘So why assume that Joe killed Tessa? That in the middle of the night while the watchman slept’ – Tariq shuffled uncomfortably, the whisper of his clothes the only commentary – ‘everything changed. The unconscious man woke. But not vague, mumbling and wondering which end of the sky fell on him, like Miriam just did. Oh no, he came to in perfect control of mind and body. He knew where the torch and the bottle were, he knew what to do with them, and he slipped out of bed and disabled two fit people before they could defend themselves. We really think that’s what happened?’

  Larry this time, softly, also aware by now where this was leading: ‘What’s the alternative?’

  They were determined to make him say it so Will did. ‘That a woman who’d already made one lethal attack now made another. She knew we were in no danger. Joe wasn’t going to wake up – not then, possibly not ever. But to be safe she had to get rid of both him and Miriam, and all that stood – or slept – in her way was Tariq. That may have been her doing too. Did she give you some of that lemonade?’

  Tariq nodded; then, realizing that wouldn’t serve, said doubtfully, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And soon afterwards you started nodding off? So the answer to Richard’s question is, she did indeed have a sedative in her bag.’

  ‘It was Tessa behind the torch?’ Tariq’s voice rose incredulously.

  ‘Look, I don’t know,’ admitted Will. ‘I wasn’t there. But it makes more sense than the alternative. She drugged you, then she hit you – by the state of the bottle, hard enough to put you to sleep for good. When we found you we were meant to think that Joe had come to swinging. It’s just her bad luck that Mama Straker didn’t raise no weaklings.’

  More than the note of levity, the syntax shocked Will a little: he shook his head in disbelief. ‘Then she hauled you away from the door and dragged Joe out of bed and down the corridor to the lift. He was heavy but she’s no weakling either and it‘s only a few yards. That’s when her hair got caught in the door. Not when Joe was disposing of her body. When she was disposing of his.’

&nbs
p; Chapter Twenty-Six

  There was a long pause as they considered it: a speculative quiet from those who thought Will could be right, the silence of disgust from those who thought he was wrong. After a moment the torch flashed on, the beam wavering slightly before finding the pale oval of his face. Its strength was waning but they’d been sitting in the dark long enough that it made him flinch. With his eyes screwed up and his face half-averted he looked shifty and unreliable, making it easy to dismiss his words as spite.

  Sheelagh sniffed her disdain. ‘That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  But Richard had spent a lot of time listening to lies and listening to the truth, and staking his reputation on which was which. He judged will an intelligent, perceptive and decent man, so his opinion was worth something even if unexpected light made him squint. But he didn’t switch the torch off. ‘Is that what you believe?’

  ‘On the balance of probabilities,’ said Will, resorting to legal formulae. ‘Perhaps not beyond reasonable doubt.’ The missing woman would lose a civil action based on the evidence but win a criminal one. She might have to pay damages but she wouldn’t do time.

  Such niceties were lost on Larry. He believed in what he knew, and the one thing they were sure of was who brought them here. The rest followed from that. ‘Next you’ll be telling us it was her hit Miriam and greased the lift door!’

  Will thought about it, grey eyes blinking in the torchlight. ‘Perhaps it was.’

  Larry’s tone was derisory. ‘Why would she?’ ‘Why would he?’

  ‘Because— You know why!’

  ‘I know why he brought us here – to give us a hard time for failing Cathy. But there’s no proof he meant to kill us. Nothing seriously unpleasant happened while Joe and Miriam were the only ones who knew what was going on. Somebody rifled Tariq’s briefcase, probably to find out just who he was. Well, Joe knew already. It was only after that, when we all knew what it was about, that people started getting hurt.’