But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Reeve took out her phone and began searching through it as she interrupted.

  “It won’t be necessary because I’ve already contacted a Mr… here it is, a Mr Donaldson. I believe he is the company secretary of Regis Homes?”

  “Yes. He is.”

  “Mr Donaldson has asked us to keep him informed of what happens. But I’ve no doubt that he will wish to speak to you in person. At the appropriate time.”

  Which is not now, thought Smith. That was lovely – Reeve had not told him she had done that. Classy. Ms Miller was completely wrong-footed and would do well to recover.

  “What happens now?”

  “We will find out what happened here on the 6th of December. Whatever the explanation, it is a serious matter, as I’m sure you have already realized. With the full cooperation of your staff, we can deal with it quietly and, hopefully, quickly.”

  “How quietly?”

  Smith sighed and turned his gaze back to the foyer whilst still following the conversation. These days, it’s always about the publicity, the media fall-out, the corporate image. This manager, who had presumably known Joan Riley for a good while, had not said ‘The poor dear’ or ‘Who would have done such a thing?’ No – her first concern was how much fuss there would be. And her second was probably, how much will that fuss harm my career prospects?

  “At the moment, media interest will not help our inquiries at all, Ms Miller – though that can, I have to warn you, sometimes change. At present, if approached, we will have no comment. However, once we begin to speak to your staff, even if we do not go into details, they will begin to realise that something is wrong. That is inevitable, and we cannot be responsible for what they then do.”

  The landline on Irene Miller’s desk began to ring. The three of them looked at it, all perhaps assuming the worst in view of what was being discussed, and then the manager jabbed a finger onto the keypad; after a moment, they could hear a phone ringing somewhere in another office.

  “My main concern is with our residents. Some of them listen to the news and read papers. If this becomes public, it will upset them. If there is any way we can minimize that risk, I would appreciate it.”

  Smith looked at her again. She seemed to be sincere.

  “I can give you my word that if we need to make a statement, you will be forewarned. I will do that personally.”

  “Thank you, Inspector. What can I do to help now?”

  “Sergeant Smith has a list of what we need to see and do this afternoon. He will be in charge of the officers who come to Rosemary House, and will lead in the interviewing process. He will take you through the list while I make a call outside. And then I would like you to show us around while the other officers get to work.”

  When Reeve had gone, the two of them faced each other in silence. Then Smith got up and took the folder around to Ms Miller’s side of the desk. From there, he could see the world of Rosemary House as she saw it.

  Irene Miller could see why some of the items were on the sergeant’s list but others mystified her. He had come with two copies, one of which was for her own records – naturally, he said, she would want to keep her own account of the investigation. She had not considered that, not yet. He annotated his own copy as she told him where the various files were kept and who was responsible for them. In response to his questions about the administrative staff, she told him about her office manager, Rita Sanchez, and Rita’s part-time assistant, Tracey. He wanted to know exactly where their offices were in relation to her own – she said that she would show him in just a moment, if it was that important. He was silent for a moment then, and she felt that her remark had been taken as somehow offhand.

  “Well, Ms Miller, that’s just one of the problems in my job. When you start off, you have no idea what will, in the end, be important. So it’s best not to judge, I find, just treat everything as if it might be. Does that make sense?”

  He waited until she nodded like an uncooperative schoolgirl. Then he took out a small black notebook and asked her to repeat and to spell the names of her administrative staff as he wrote them down.

  “And their phone numbers will be in their staff files, I assume. Perhaps you’d be so good as to give me your number while we’re at it, save me looking it up.”

  She did so. All this was intrusive and he knew it – he was making no apologies for it, but quite the reverse – he was making a point.

  “And finally, Mrs Riley’s medical records which you say are kept here in your office. I presume in these cabinets here, which have the keys in the locks… Are these generally kept locked when you are not in the building? Who has access to the medical records?”

  She took another look at the detective sergeant and he returned it, eye to eye. He wasn’t rude, wasn’t officious, but there was something… She struggled for the word. Something almost relentless in the way he moved methodically through his list of questions, in the way he went straight on through any reservations she might have about what he wanted to know or how he wished to proceed. She sensed that whatever answer she gave next would seem questionable but there was no alternative.

  “The filing cabinets are not locked during the day when I am here. When I leave, I lock my office but the shift supervisors have keys – they must be able to access records for obvious reasons. Illness is not unusual here.”

  “I see.”

  Did he? And what did he see? There would be more questions.

  “The care staff will be giving medication daily, probably several times a day, I suppose. They don’t come up here every time to check, do they? There must be other records of all that on the wards?”

  “We do not have wards, sergeant.”

  At least he got that wrong.

  “We have floors divided into groups of private rooms, as you will see shortly. Each of the two floors has its own secure space where medicines are kept, and you are right – every patient has his or her own record card where we keep track of daily medication. The information is entered weekly onto a database. We have a very good inspection report in that area of our work.”

  He walked over to the filing cabinets and pulled one open slightly.

  She said, “Excuse me. I need to find out what will happen with the medical records. As you know, they are confidential. I’m not sure what the situation is, and I-”

  “I can tell you what the situation is, to save you a bit of time. If you like…”

  He wasn’t looking at her; instead he had taken out the black notebook again and was writing something down about the files in the cabinets – or perhaps he was making a note about her objections. Either way, he was waiting for her to respond as he did so.

  “Go on.”

  “We have no warrant. Therefore we can only request that you disclose these medical records to us under Section 29 of the Data Protection Act of 1998. You are under no obligation to do so but may do so where patient confidentiality is outweighed by the greater public good – such as the detection of a serious crime. I think that applies in this case but if necessary we can apply for a warrant under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984. You could phone Mr Donaldson but I expect he’d start wondering why you were not yet cooperating fully with the police.”

  He had finished scribbling in his notebook and was now looking out of the window into the foyer again.

  “Can I assume that you will let us have Mrs Riley’s medical file so that we can make a copy of it? We will leave the copy with you and exchange them when the investigation is over. And did I mention while we’re at it that we will need a couple of rooms to work in, and an outside line – and some photocopying facilities?”

  “Is that all?”

  “Canteen?”

  She told him that Rita would arrange something for them. He came back to her desk and stood a little to the side of it and a little behind her – she turned in her swivel chair to see what he was doing.

  “When you are here during the day, do you work with your door open or cl
osed?”

  She held back the impulse to ask the question again; in her life she had had few dealings with the police. Perhaps they were all like this.

  “It depends. It’s often closed. I have to make some awkward phone calls, and write some detailed reports. When I’m doing that sort of thing, the door is closed.”

  “Because I’ve noticed that when it is, you can’t see the outer door. You can’t see anyone going in and out of it, and you don’t have a receptionist, do you?”

  “No, we don’t. We could not justify that. Rita’s office is opposite, and she can hear anyone coming and going.”

  “Hear but not see?”

  “The door has a numerical key code, sergeant. People cannot just walk in and out – you must have noticed that.”

  “Yes. A four digit code. We’ll be coming back to that, I’m sure. So anyone who knows the code can come in and out during the day and not necessarily be seen by anyone in the offices. And after office hours?”

  Was that an implication? Did this annoying little man really imagine that she worked ‘office hours’, that her phone never rang at midnight, that she never had to drive in through the rain at two in the morning to sort out hysterical residents and incompetent care staff?

  “When the day and evening staff leave, the outer doors are locked. I don’t know whether it’s a three or five-point locking system but no doubt I can find out.”

  “And the lift in the foyer? Where does that go?”

  “Up.”

  For the first time, he seemed to have a genuine smile on his face.

  “Ms Miller, you’ve been most helpful. Can we take that tour now?”

  Smith found Alison Reeve outside in the foyer, examining the visitors’ book that lay on a table close to the outer door. Around its cover was a fringe of silver Christmas tinsel that someone had forgotten to remove. She pulled a face at him and looked down at the book again, turning the pages back into last year.

  “All a bit leaky, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, still running her eyes up the columns ruled in the book.

  “You could say that. Visitors are requested to sign in and out with time and date but there doesn’t seem to be any check that they are doing so. I can’t see a camera anywhere. While I’ve been standing here, one person has come in and one has gone out. They didn’t sign in or out, so I assume they were staff but who knows? How did you get on?”

  “A bit of institutional resistance to overcome. Sorted now, I think.”

  He went over to the door and examined the keypad. Ten single digit keys, quite worn and shiny, probably been there for a year or two. Then he looked at the locking system – which was a five pointer, must mention that to Ms Miller – and tried the handle. It was a substantial Yale but was also probably the original fitting; it had certainly been there long enough for all sorts of people to have keys gathering dust in drawers and glove compartments.

  “What was the phone call? Or were you just giving us the opportunity to get to know each other? I think we’re going to get on very well.”

  “It occurred to me that these places are all inspected to death now, like the rest of us. That’s a bit inappropriate, isn’t it… Never mind. So I called Amanda and asked her to look into locating some reports, ready for John when he’s back at his desk.”

  Irene Miller came out of her office and made something of a show of locking the door and trying the handle when she had done so. When she looked up from that, she found Smith nodding with approval.

  Rita Sanchez was not surprised when they were introduced to her which probably meant that she already knew there were police in the building. She was small, olive skinned, darkly pretty and as Mediterranean-looking as her name had suggested she might be. Her office was large and immaculately tidy, and when Miller said “Our first line of defence against everything!” Smith caught the odd, intense look that went between the two women. When Rita turned away to a drawer to find the floor plans of the building that she would copy for them, he saw too the tiny gold nose stud and the little hoops of the same metal that pierced the side of her left ear like a sequence of miniature curtain rings.

  When he asked about the other occupant of the main office, Smith was told that it was one of Tracey’s college days – she was never in on a Wednesday or a Thursday. Smith wrote that down in the notebook, aware that he was being watched as he did so.

  The three of them took the lift up to the first floor. Irene Miller explained that Rosemary House had two floors for residents and a basement for the boiler room, the laundry and storage. The upper floor, where Joan Riley had lived since her arrival, was for the less dependent elderly; some had early stage dementia, some had mobility problems, some had other chronic medical conditions which meant that they could no longer live alone. Their ages ranged from the late sixties to well over ninety. “Those are actually quite different generations – something else we have to deal with that few people outside understand,” the manager had said as the lift door opened onto the upper floor.

  It was light and airy, the ceilings white and the walls painted in light green and pale blue, as if someone had chosen colours to represent a sunny spring afternoon. They walked off the landing and onto a central corridor with rooms on either side, four rooms on either side before the corridor deviated slightly to the right and then straightened again. Here was a change in colour, the walls now a soft primrose yellow. Irene Miller stopped and explained.

  “Our rooms are grouped in fours and sixes. It gives a sense of local community, each group is like a little village. Each area has its own name as well – we’ve just come through Peace.”

  Smith said, “And where are we now?”

  “Harmony.”

  “OK.”

  Some of the rooms were empty, others held their residents, sitting in easy chairs, televisions on, or radios, with magazines brought in by relatives, fruit bowls on little tables, prints on walls, slippers under beds… Smith took it in professionally, aware that at some point he would need to process what he was seeing in a different way. One or two of the occupants looked up at the unfamiliar faces but most did not, seemingly unaware of the changing world just a few feet beyond the threshold of their door.

  The corridor deviated again, this time to the left and they were into pale lilac and Stillness. Irene Miller halted and pointed at a closed door; it had the number three stencilled on it and the name plate ‘Iris’. The manager said quietly, “This was Joan’s room.”

  Reeve said what Smith was thinking.

  “At some point we will need to have a look, I’m afraid.”

  “Iris has been in here for three weeks but she’s very cooperative. It shouldn’t be a problem. But everything will have changed, of course.”

  She knocked on the door but there was no response.

  Smith said, “They can lock their rooms?”

  “Yes, they have more privacy than in many homes. If they want to be alone, we let them, as long as it doesn’t become complete withdrawal. Obviously we have pass keys but we don’t use them unnecessarily.”

  “We don’t need to disturb her now, if she is in there. I’d like to come back in an hour or so, with PC Ford – he was the constable who attended on the night that Mrs Riley died. If that’s alright?”

  Irene Miller noted the change in tone. She wasn’t that surprised – the reality of life, of the remainders of lives, in a care home affected people in all sorts of ways.

  “Yes. If you can make it a little earlier, I can get one of the staff to ensure that she goes to afternoon tea in the social area.”

  “We’ll do that, thank you. You say everything will have changed. What happens when someone leaves – when someone new takes over a room?”

  “We provide whatever is needed to furnish a room but most people like to bring things of their own. Favourite chairs, a small cupboard or dressing table, quilts and so on. Joan’s family cleared the room after her death.”

  They moved on. At the mid-way point was
a set of stairs down to the left; the double doors had a keypad and Smith asked if the code was the same as on the front door. It was. They passed through three more groups of rooms – Comfort, Friendship and Love. At the far end of the building another set of stairs went down, this time to the right. Beyond here the corridor opened out into a spacious communal area that had a large, wall-mounted television, a sound system, shelves of books, a huge tank of goldfish and a variety of arm- and easy chairs. There were windows all along the longer wall, and views out over the golf course and the wooded gardens of Gorsefields beyond.

  Reeve said, “I haven’t been into many care homes, Ms Miller, but this is, well, it’s lovely, isn’t it? Compared to many? To most?”

  “It is.”

  The inspector looked at the manager, waiting for her to say more.

  “I’m sure you are already aware that our residents are mainly privately paying people, though we do have a few local authority beds – whose occupants, I must stress, are treated no differently to anyone else once they are here. We do our best to make sure that their stays are as safe and fulfilling as they can possibly be.”

  All of them must have been aware of the irony in her words as they looked around and waited for someone else to move the conversation on. At the far end, two carers in blue uniforms were packing things away into cardboard boxes – Christmas decorations as far as Smith could see. It seemed rather late but perhaps it helped to make the season of goodwill to all men as long as possible under the circumstances. Two elderly women that he had not noticed at first slept in easy chairs; one had her fingers tangled in knitting that lay on her lap, and the other’s head had lolled to one side, her mouth open.

  The room’s only other occupant was a man sitting in a chair close to the windows. He held a newspaper in front of him as if reading it but Smith noticed that the man’s gaze was actually fixed firmly on the visitors. Smith walked over towards the window as if he was interested in the view, and nodded a greeting to the gentleman in the armchair; the paper, he could now see, was The Times. The man returned the nod, keeping his eyes on the new arrival.