Second Opinion

by Claire Rayner

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ George said.

  ‘Well, take it from us. No customers’ cars here at all. OK, so these yobs follow him out, duff him up, and — well, we reckon they knocked him down easy enough and then someone ran over him.’

  She bit her lip, seeing it clearly in her mind’s eye. ‘More than once, I’d say. Going by the injuries.’

  ‘Yeah, so you said. Twice forwards, once back, right?’

  ‘Mmm. It accounts for the way the gravel entered the skin. I have to look in detail in a proper light tomorrow of course, but that was how it looked out here.’

  ‘And then they drove off. All of ‘em. They could be anyone, anywhere.’ He sounded deeply gloomy. ‘Gettin’ ‘em won’t exactly be easy.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone in the pub know who they were?’

  ‘They say not. Tomorrow we’ll get down to it a bit more thoroughly. At least my fellas had the wit to get the names and addresses of everyone in the place and not just in the bar when it happened. They recognized some of the customers of course — it’d be a poor show if they didn’t. I’d want to know the reason why if they couldn’t put a name to most of them. That’s what knowing your community is all about But there were some who were strangers, and we’ll have to chase them. It’s never easy, of course. They look after their own in these parts.’

  ‘Even if their own are killers?’ George asked bitterly. ‘So much for the good old Cockney warmth and good heart you’re always telling me about.’

  ‘These people aren’t my sort and never you dare say they are,’ he said sharply and his hand on her elbow tightened. ‘When I said in these parts I wasn’t talking about the ordinary good blokes who live around here, but the bloody publicans. They know which side their lousy beer froths and they don’t take no chances. But you watch me tomorrow. I’ll find out who it was.’

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said slowly and he peered down at her.

  ‘Now?’

  I’ll feel better if I do.’

  ‘Then let’s have it,’ and again his hand tightened on her arm, but this time it was a warm and protective grip that helped.

  ‘I’m afraid it might be something — well, listen.’ She told him as briefly as she could what had happened in Barrie Ward on the day Kevin Ritchard died and above all what Harry had said to her that afternoon.

  ‘When he said it, I paid no attention. It didn’t really mean anything. But then I heard afterwards he’d tried to get hold of me, and then he tried again and I wasn’t available. I meant to get back to him, really I did. I meant to call him this morning but somehow it slipped my mind and —’ She bit her lip again, feeling the tension tighten her throat and knowing that her voice sounded thick and tearful in consequence. ‘I keep remembering what he said to me, and wondering — could it have had anything to do with what happened here tonight?’

  He stood very still, clearly thinking, and then shook his head firmly, but to her gratitude, didn’t offer facile reassurance. ‘Listen, there’s no way we can possibly know, is there? It sounds to me, from that story, that this has been another bit of racial aggro. If this bloke — Ritchard? — if Ritchard comes out of Old East and tells some of his mates that he reckons that this Dr Harry has done for his kid — well.’ He whistled softly on a long intake of breath. ‘Can’t you see the line-up? They get all tanked up, fill themselves with sentimental claptrap about poor dear kids killed by lousy black doctors — I mean, it’s written in stone, ain’t it? Out they go looking for him and when they find him they deal with him in their horrible way. It makes more sense than thinking he was killed because there was something somebody didn’t want you to know, and that he wanted to tell you. What could there be, after all?’

  She nodded. ‘I know. I realize that I’ve been telling myself the same thing ever since I got here and recognized him. But the fact remains the idea’s there. And it’s not so easy to get rid of.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘If it’ll help you, want to come with me when I go checking tomorrow? Can you get away?’

  She stared at him, startled. ‘How do you mean, come with you? When you go and investigate this, you mean?’

  ‘If it’ll help. Then you’ll see for yourself the sorts we’re dealing with. It could get nasty — you should see these yobbos when you get them in a corner — but you’re a tough cookie, as they say. And I’ll be there to take care of you. How about it? Then you can see for yourself that you’re not to blame for not finding out what it was this fella wanted to tell you. It was probably just some doctorish thing. I mean, you do have to talk to each other about patients, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, a little distracted, trying to think it through. ‘I’m not sure —’

  ‘It won’t be all that dangerous,’ he said. ‘Like I said, I’ll be here to take care of you. And it’s not as though you weren’t a sort of honorary copper, is it? You’re an officer of the court, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, as if I cared about that,’ she snapped. ‘And I don’t need looking after either. I just wasn’t sure if I could spare the time. But why not? After I’ve done the PM on Harry, though. That has to come first.’

  ‘Of course. What time shall I pick you up?’

  ‘Make it about eleven,’ she said. ‘And Gus?’

  He had started to walk round the car to open it. ‘Yeah?’ He looked at her over the top of the car. He was a bit puffy around the eyes and his curly hair badly needed brushing. He had a smear of mud down one side of his face too. He’d never looked, she thought, so, well, so friendly.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Really. Thanks a lot’

  14

  The number of people who found reason to call in at the path, lab the following morning after news of Harry’s death was reported on the seven a.m. radio news bulletin was remarkable. Sheila was in a lather of excitement which Jerry, the sardonic senior technician who was her deputy, said was as near as she’d get this year to having a sexual experience, and the rest of the lab staff were agitated as well as excited. ‘To have one of our own doctors killed in a pub brawl,’ Sheila said, ‘is not what you’d expect even at Old East, is it?’

  George managed to ignore it all by going down to the mortuary almost as soon as she arrived at the hospital and refusing to emerge for anyone. Even for Professor Hunnisett himself who chose to drop in as ‘he was passing’, an explanation which, as Jerry pointed out, was hardly likely since the lab was tucked in such a distant corner of the hospital that no one ever got to it except by making a distinct effort, a comment which made Sheila smirk, and sent her giggling to the phone to summon George up to see the Professor. But George sent a message back that she had already started on a PM (though she hadn’t) and could Professor Hunnisett not speak to her on the phone? He did and burbled something inconsequential about a lecture series shortly to be on offer at the hospital about which he wanted to talk to her, before he could bring himself actually to say what it was he’d come over to her unit for.

  ‘This is a nasty business,’ he said and coughed noisily, so that she had to hold the handset away from her ear. ‘One of our housemen — well, it’s dreadful! Quite, quite dreadful.’

  ‘Yes,’ George said non-committally and waited.

  ‘It’s causing some trouble in the neighbourhood, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ said George and again waited. Professor Hunnisett breathed hard at the other end of the line.

  ‘Some people seem to have got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick,’ he burst out ‘I mean, dammit all, I’ve got these demonstrations going on outside! I ask you! As though it’s our fault that he got hurt.’

  ‘He’s more than hurt,’ George said. ‘He’s dead.’

  Professor Hunnisett ignored that ‘It’s the most stupid thing I ever saw. Half of them have got banners shrieking about Trusts and safety for patients and a lot of other irrelevant stuff and then there are these others going on about England for the English, though why
they should be there, I really can’t —’

  George’s patience fragmented. ‘They’re the ones who are glad Harry’s dead,’ she said more loudly than she needed to have done, hoping her voice made him wince as much as his coughing had hurt her ears. ‘The fact that Harry’s the one who’s been killed by their bloody racism doesn’t stop them demonstrating against him. Blaming you for employing him in the first place, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Professor Hunnisett. ‘Really? That does make one wonder whether one should reconsider one’s employment guidelines. Now we’re a Trust and responsible for ourselves more, and having to take local opinion into account…’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ George said and closed her eyes. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have a PM to do. Some other time, Professor.’ And she hung up the phone and stood there shaking. Maybe she’d be out of a job now? Was banging down the phone on the hospital’s Dean and Clinical Director a firing offence? She didn’t know and didn’t, she decided, really care. All that mattered was what had happened to Harry. There was something particularly pitiful about the body now lying waiting for her in her mortuary; lithe, well made, young — he had been, she had discovered from his personal file, just twenty-five, a newly qualified doctor in his first real job — and so vulnerable. He’d needed support and help and no one had given it to him …

  She stood and stared at the phone. It’s I who failed him, she thought. He wanted to tell me something — maybe about that baby with AIDS? Who knows? All I do know is that if I hadn’t gone snooping around asking questions maybe he wouldn’t have died.

  She shook her head at that and went down the corridor to complete putting on her greens and rubber apron and gloves, ready to start on Harry’s corpse. Make your mind up, she told herself sharply. Either Harry was killed by a racist attack, which is what Gus thinks happened, or — well, or what? The way you’re thinking you seem to be implying that there’s something going on here at Old East that he stumbled on and wanted to tell you about. But why would he want to tell just you? Surely he’d have wanted to tell others, whatever it was. His own boss, perhaps, or at any rate Prudence Jennings? That would be more logical, surely, than choosing me who had nothing to do with his area of work.

  Except for that baby, the child who wasn’t called Oberlander. She rubbed her nose with the back of one hand, a childish gesture she reverted to whenever she was puzzled and tried to control her thoughts. All this twisting and turning in her mind would get her nowhere. Better to get on with the PM and see what facts there were. Afterwards, with Gus, there’d be time and opportunity to dig deeper for reasons and blame-apportioning.

  Danny was ready, looking grim. He too had had his share of people wandering by just ‘dropping in for a natter’ and was as disgusted as she was.

  ‘Makes yer sick, don’t it?’ he said. ‘Like, they’d never ‘eard of the poor bugger till ‘e gets ‘isself killed and then all of a sudden they’re full of interest. It’s like those ghouls what stand at the side of the road gawpin’ when there’s bin an RTA. Sickenin’, I calls it.’ And he pulled the sheet off Harry’s body and offered George the big tissue knife with a flourish, clearly quite unaware of the ghoulishness of his own approach to his job, which he clearly savoured deeply.

  It was an observation which had the absurd effect of cheering George considerably. She was able to get on with the job in hand without too many qualms, and rapidly forgot that this was Harry Rajabani. It became just a body that needed investigating, and one that posed some mysteries; the sort she liked best.

  Harold Constant was there as observer as usual, and so was Michael Urquhart, one of the detective constables on Gus’s team, and she nodded at him amiably. She liked Michael, had done ever since the first case they’d worked on together when he’d provided the help that had enabled her to prove to Gus that her ideas were right and that there was a case to be dealt with, and he grinned back. He was inured now to the mortuary and the PM room, no longer blanching as he once had when she set her knife just below a sternum, where the ribs met in the midline, and sent it sweeping down to the pubic bone, opening the abdominal cavity completely. He was just interested.

  But the abdominal contents were not all that mattered this morning. It was the surface injuries that told the story of what had happened to Harry most clearly, and she made a careful superficial examination before beginning on the viscera, exploring the skin gingerly and with great delicacy.

  ‘Gravel burns on all exposed skin areas,’ she dictated. ‘Hands, lower arms, especially on inner aspects and face, especially right cheek. Petechiae and some larger areas of bruising across the back and shoulders, which make it clear that great pressure was exerted. Some overlapping of the injuries consistent with the body being pressured on three separate passes as would occur if a car passed over three times. Beneath the surface bruising, fractures of the ribs, the pelvis, the spine. Some pulpiness in lung, kidneys query damaged. To check on opening the abdomen. Kidney crushed on right.’

  The dictation went on for some time, and then she turned her attention to the head and neck for last checks before setting to work with her knife. There was less to see on the back of the head and neck; the thick sleek hair had clearly protected the skull, and anyway there was no indication that the car had actually touched the skull. There was, though, a small bruise just under the occiput, where the head met the spine, and she stored that in her mind before setting to work to open the skull.

  The desultory conversation between Michael and Harold ceased as the burr of the electric saw filled the air, and they waited for George to speak again; but she was absorbed in what she was doing, so much so that a frown was creasing between her brows. She was surprised and she looked it.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Michael Urquhart was alert; Harold Constant seemed almost asleep and hadn’t noticed her reaction.

  ‘Well, yes, in a way,’ she said slowly and then shook her head. ‘How does this sound for a scenario? Someone gives him a bit of a wallop on the head — very scientific rather than hard. It knocks him out for a few moments — just a bit of concussion in here — and that is why he’s lying down so neatly ready to be run over by a large car.’

  ‘If you say so, doctor,’ Michael Urquhart said. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, maybe I’ve got my view of the racist mob psychology hopelessly adrift, but I imagined they actually enjoyed the beating-up part. I mean, they really hate their victim, don’t they? They aren’t interested in doing something to him that’s hard to spot. They wouldn’t get any kick out of coming on to someone who’s all unaware and hitting on the back of the neck in a way that makes his head jerk back and leads to an immediate concussion and unconsciousness so that he wouldn’t know what hit him. And they wouldn’t get any joy out of running over him with a heavy car to kill him. No real blood to see, no groans of agony, nothing like that.’

  Michael was looking at her with his head on one side, like an intelligent and hungry bird. ‘You reckon that’s what happened here?’

  ‘I reckon,’ she said. ‘Look. It’s clear, that bruise. And the oedema of the brain. It’s all indicative of pre-death concussion and that means probably loss of consciousness. There are no injuries to the arms, apart from the sort of gravel burns that came from being dragged against the ground. No sign he tried to fight off his attackers. The car passed over him three times, twice going forward — see the line of bruises, heavier at this end? — and once backward. There, you see? And he just lay there! He couldn’t have been aware of what was going on. And as I say, that doesn’t sound to me like a racist attack. What say you?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Michael said. ‘Is that all the evidence, then?’

  ‘Let’s open the belly and see,’ she said, and this time accepted the big tissue knife from Danny. Again silence filled the room until she began to dictate again, her voice clear and crisp.

  ‘Heart displaced by massive tear to aortic arch and consequent extravasation,’ she said. ‘Lungs
compressed, and right lung pierced by fractured fourth rib. Spleen crushed. Liver crushed and capsule severely torn by displaced fracture seventh rib. Kidney? crushed and pierced by spinal fracture …’

  Her voice went on, listing the horrific injuries, and they listened and shifted their weight from one foot to the other.

  When she’d finished she looked at Michael.

  ‘I reckon it’s clear, don’t you? This had to be quite a different sort of attack from the one first imagined.’

  ‘Then say so in your report,’ Michael said quickly. ‘It’s no good me saying anything. It’s got to come from you. I’m supposed to be going straight from here to’ — he reached in his pocket to find his notebook and flicked it open — ‘ninety-nine Laura House on the Lansbury Estate. Flat of a Dave Ritchard. If you could give me the report on this to take with me …’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ she said. ‘I can bring it with me. Your guv’nor said I could go along on the investigation this morning. Said to phone him when I was ready and he’d get me picked up. So I might as well come with you, right? Gus — the Guv’ll be there, will he?’

  ‘He said he would.’

  ‘Fine. Give me a bit longer to finish here. Danny?’ She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Get Sheila to alert the typists, would you? I want this transcript typed up before I’ve finished my shower. Tell her to get Marie on it. Stop whatever else she’s doing and give it priority. She’s the best one we’ve got.’

  She worked swiftly now, finishing her dictation and sending Danny off with the tape hot foot; dealing with the final details of the PM, including the closure, unaided.

  She was very angry. The confusion of the earlier part of the morning had given way to an icy determination to track down who ever had done this and to catch him so tightly that there’d be no way he could wriggle out of it. She had never been in favour of capital punishment; it had always seemed to her the most bestial of acts to do to murderers the very thing the murderers had themselves done; it wasn’t justice, but revenge. Yet this time she wished that this killer could hang. Not because Harry had suffered so much more than others, but because she had seen Harry concerned about sick people, spending all his energy and his working life caring for them. The man had been a doctor, dammit, killed because of some aspect of his medical work, of that she was certain now. And to kill such a one was — and she caught herself as her thoughts went careering away. I sound like policemen do when a fellow copper is killed. Do I, like them, reserve my greatest concern for my own sort? A disagreeable idea, and she took a deep breath to get back some of her emotional control. It was effective. Even before she walked out of the room she felt better. She had, she was sure, identified something very important about this killing, something that would enable Gus to avoid wasting any time and to seek the real killer as fast as possible. There was no need for him to go haring along the racist-attack path. That was definite. He had to come here, to the hospital, because it was here at Old East that the answers were to be found.