‘You won’t get any more out of her,’ Barney said, and his eyes were very bright as he looked at Spain. ‘But I know how we can find out more. And as I see it, find out who was supplying Quayle with his drugs and we’ve got his murderer.’
‘Oh, that’s clear enough!’ Spain said a little scornfully, and walked across the main Casualty room to Sister’s office, the others following him. ‘It don’t take much to work that out. Quayle was gettin’ stuff from one of the staff here, who got fed up and wanted out. And took the best way out he could. I reckon it all happened at once—Quayle gettin’ ill enough to come into hospital, and then Bruce findin’ out about the thefts. It had to happen sooner or later, o’ course. No one gets away with robbery of this sort for very long. So this bloke decides to clean up the mess—and makes a worse one while he was at it.’
‘The notebook,’ Lucy said suddenly.
‘What?’ Spain squinted across at her.
‘The notebook,’ she said again. ‘And the brief case. That’s what Roberta Vickers was killed for. It must have had something in it about this—supplier, whoever he is. He must have been afraid she’d split on him.’
‘Not on your life,’ Spain said crisply. ‘I daresay you’re right enough about the fact the notebook and the brief case held evidence that would point to our man—but the reason that woman was killed is much simpler. I reckon Quayle was a blackmailer—that he had somethin’ on this bloke. And got himself paid off in drugs. I mean, if this bloke’s a doctor, and I’m sure he is, he’s not goin’ to risk his career to let someone else make money out of what he steals, is he? O’ course not. If he fancies himself in the drug business, he acts as his own pusher. He doesn’t split the profits. So, when Quayle got too much for him, he killed him, but didn’t reckon to be inherited. But he was, you see. This Roberta Vickers—she must have been up to her eyes in the business. She lived with Quayle, on this boat—the Bobby Vee—and you heard that girl just now. She went to the boat for supplies, didn’t she? Expectin’ to get them from Vickers, that’s what. As I see it, when Quayle died Vickers lost no time in tellin’ our bloke the situation was just as before, with herself as the recipient, so he killed her too. Makes sense, don’t it?’
‘It does,’ Barney said, and there was an air of suppressed excitement about him. ‘And now we’ve got to find Our Bloke, as you call him. And I know how to do it——’
‘Right,’ Spain said. ‘I’m a reasonable man. Always was. I believe in listenin’ to people, if they reckon they know somethin’ that might be helpful. Don’t promise to do anything about what they say but I’ll always listen.’ Spain was definitely recovering some of his normal good humour. A small break in the clouds that had overhung his case was quite enough to make him bounce up again.
‘We tell the people here about this girl. That we now know there’s a drug supplier here, and that she came to see him. We tell people she’s in a single room—your side ward perhaps, Lucy—and then sit back and wait.’
Spain frowned. ‘A decoy? But why should he bite? She doesn’t know who it is.’
‘I know she doesn’t,’ Barney said impatiently. ‘But the Bloke must be led to think she does. Look, if I go to breakfast tomorrow, when everyone is there, and tell this story, dropping in, ever so casually, that the patient said she knew who it was, but then passed out, and we’re just waiting for her to come round so that you can talk to her and close the case, what’ll happen?’
‘He’ll panic,’ Spain said slowly.
‘Of course he will. He’ll try to get at her, and kill her. I mean, he’s demolished three people. What’s one more to someone like that?’
‘And we’ll be waiting for him.’
‘But of course!’ Barney said.’ Isn’t it always done in the best of police circles? The setting of traps? The using of decoys? I thought that was all policewomen were ever used for.’
‘Hmmph,’ Spain said. ‘You’re gettin’ cheeky. But if we do it, one thing’s sure. We’ll have to use a policewoman in the room. You can’t use the real junkie, can you?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it!’ Barney said. ‘She’s a sick girl and needs treatment. No, we’ll get her admitted to the psychiatric unit tomorrow, down in Surrey. The police-woman idea’s fine. Are we on?’
There was a silence. They stood there, Lucy close beside Barney, staring up at him, Travers leaning against the wall and staring fixedly but woodenly at his chief, and Spain sitting perched on Sister’s desk, turning a paper knife in his heavy hands, his chin sunk into his neck.
Lucy could hear the hiss and splutter of the steam sterilisers outside in the main room, and the distant roar of traffic from the road far beyond, and the faint clutter of sterilising drums as far down the corridors a porter made his last round of the wards. And then Spain broke the spell, lifting his head and looking at Barney with his eyes very sharp and bright, filled almost with pleasure.
‘Yes. We’re on. We should be able to make an arrest by this time tomorrow. We’ll get it up right now.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE could see the ward quite clearly from her office. The glass partition sparkled a little in the light from her desk lamp, throwing back the reflection of her own figure at the desk. She could see quite clearly the pin on the breast of her apron, the frills on her cap, the very white line of her starched collar against her suntanned throat. It made her feel a little unreal, sitting there staring at her own reflection etched against the rows of beds in the ward itself, marching into the night-time shadows, with the clock face at the far end of the ward gleaming through the darkness above her head. Three a.m. it read. The shank of the night, but Lucy was too keyed up to be sleepy.
Somewhere near the far end, a patient called hoarsely, and Lucy saw the night nurse rise swiftly from her chair under the shaded light in the centre of the ward and go hurrying silentfootedly away. Then there was a swathe of light across the polished floor and a faint clatter. The patient wanted a bedpan, Lucy thought automatically, and then turned her head to look through her office door to the sideward door beyond.
It was as blank and still as it had been the last time she had looked at it, a few moments ago. Behind it lay the little blonde policewoman, lying in the bed with a mock up of an intravenous drip attached to her arm, and her head turned into the shadows of the pillow. A brave woman, thought Lucy, and shivered. Not that there was anything to be scared of. Was there?
She pulled her cape closer round her shoulders and tried to reassure herself. Spain had assured her all would be well, when the whole thing had been planned.
‘I’m not askin’ no permission for this, Sister, except from you. It’s your ward, and you can give it, I know that. But if I go to Stroud, or the Matron or someone, and say I want to plant a decoy in one of the wards, and surround it with a lot of coppers, there’ll be all hell let loose. And what’s more, it’ll be all over the hospital in no time at all, and everyone’ll know there’s a trap laid up on Female Medical—includin’ our bloke. So let’s keep quiet about it, eh? It’s really the best way.’
And, worriedly, she had agreed, since Barney too had done his best to persuade her. It went against all her nursing instincts to allow her ward to be used as a trap, her ward full of patients.
But Barney had said, ‘It means a lot to me, Lucy. Until this is cleared up, I’m a suspended character, with the suspicion of murder or negligence or whatever hanging over me. And there’s no danger, you know. That’s a police-woman in there—not a real patient. She won’t come to harm—she’s trained to look after herself. I’ve set it all up now, sweetheart. You must let us do it——’
Barney had done a very good job that morning, by all accounts. He had gone into breakfast deliberately late, when everyone was there, and before any of them had had a chance to go. He had told, with much graphic detail, the story of the arrival of the drug addict in Casualty the night before, and told them that she had said she knew the name of the person who had been getting drugs from the Pharmacy.
‘She’s in the side-ward on Female Medical,’ he’d gone on with a nicely graduated performance of casualness as he helped himself to scrambled eggs and kippers.
‘Once she’s a bit less dehydrated and we can get some sense out of her, we’re home and dry—or so Spain says. He’s confident he can make an arrest some time soon.’
There had been a sharp silence, and then Jackson had said sourly, ‘And about time too. The time that man has wasted here—sooner it’s cleared up the better.’
‘Absolutely,’ Harry Caspar had murmured, staring at Barney.
Hickson had said nothing, just listening with his usual hangdog expression on his face, but when Barney caught his eyes, and became aware of the glint in their depths, he wondered. Could Hickson be quite as much of a fool as he seemed?
And as for the others—Derek Foster had laughed and said, ‘Good oh—I’m getting tired of falling over coppers wherever I go. It’s cramping my love life.’
Jeff had grunted in his usual fashion, but then grinned at Barney and said, ‘It’ll be good to get back to work, eh, Barney?’ and Barney had warmed to him. Jeff operated on much the same level as he did himself when it came to work. It mattered deeply to Jeff, just as it did to Barney, and of all of them, perhaps only Jeff really knew how he had felt these past miserable workless days.
‘Though I know you understand too, Lucy,’ Barney had finished, when he explained all this to her. ‘But—well, it’s different, your understanding. All mixed up with other things.’ And then he’d kissed her and said wheedlingly, ‘You will co-operate, Lucy?’ So what could she do?
There was a faint draught suddenly, whispering round the corner of the door, and nervously, Lucy pulled the desk phone a little nearer. Her job was a very simple one. She was to sit here, and if she saw anything at all odd, no matter how small, she was to lift the receiver. That was all—just lift it and put it on the desk. The policeman who was planted on the switchboard in place of the usual man would then raise the alarm and send half the local constabulary streaming out of their assorted hiding places in the vicinity of Female Medical to her side-ward. It was all so simple—and so safe, she reminded herself, but without any real conviction.
I wonder how she is in there? she thought, as the draught came whispering again. Such a nice girl, pert and cheeky, almost a feminine version of Spain, with her sharp tongue and friendly eyes. Was she scared? Or was she so used to such assignments that she’d dropped off to sleep? And why not? Spain had sworn his men would get any intruder long before he could reach the bedside——
And then she knew. Knew that the draughts she had felt hadn’t been merely accidental. Someone had opened the big outer doors, had stood there silently listening, and then just as softly closed them again—with himself on the inside. She could feel the presence of this alien somebody, almost hear his soft breathing, feel the warmth of his body.
Stiffly she turned her head, to look up the ward, suddenly wanting to see the comforting figure of the night nurse. But she was still occupied with the patient in the far corner. Only sleeping patients lay between her and the stranger within her doors. Only Lucy herself and the stranger were awake.
And then she remembered the policemen hiding around, the one in the linen cupboard, crouching absurdly among the blankets and the piles of sheets and pillow slips, the one behind the kitchen door, the other one in the main store cupboard, and breathed again. And there was Barney, too, inside that room with Spain and two other policemen as well as Travers, all silent behind the screens in the corner, waiting to get their man before he could do any harm to the cheeky blonde in the bed.
It was as though she were psychic. She couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him, but she knew he was moving nearer, along the short corridor between the main double doors and the ward doors, could feel his presence getting bigger and more ominous. Slowly she stretched out her hands to the phone, let it rest on the handpiece, and strained her eyes towards the blank polished panels of the side-ward door.
She saw his shadow first, incredibly elongated in the dim light of the corridor, touching the door, climbing up and across it, distorted and ugly. And she sat there, frozen, unable to move a muscle, so sick was she with fear, so paralysed with terror.
And then she saw him. A square shape, absurdly square and solid, human and yet somehow not, with a blank face and a perfectly smooth round head and smooth very dark brown hands. A monstrous creature.
And then she heard an hysterical giggle deep inside her as she saw why the figure looked so strange. Theatre rig. He was wearing theatre clothes, a dark green gown over heavy but silent-treading white rubber boots, smooth dark brown rubber gloves giving his hands the exaggerated elegance of a shop window dummy, a tight dark green cap, and a broad white mask that covered his face from lower lashes to neck.
She couldn’t see his eyes properly, for his face was turned towards the door, and one hand was slowly, so slowly, turning the handle.
But still she sat, unable to move, and the door opened wider and wider and then he was gone, slipping inside like a wraith in the half light of the corridor——
At the far end of the ward water flushed suddenly as a tap was turned on, and it broke the spell. Convulsively she grabbed the phone and let the handpiece clatter to the desk, and then she was on her feet, hurling herself at the door. They had told her to stay in her office, no matter what happened, but she couldn’t do that, not now that she had let them down so badly. The alarm should have been called as soon as that shadow had appeared, and she had wasted valuable seconds because she had been too frightened to move.
It all seemed to happen at once. As she reached the sideward door, there was a sudden furious clatter, and her mind said with precise and nurselike tones, ‘They’ve knocked over the screens——’
And then the door burst open, and the green gowned figure shot out, with four others behind him, but the figure saw her, standing right across his way, and seized her in an incredibly hard grip and whirled her round, and held her against him as he looked over her shoulder at the four men.
She saw Barney’s face whiten, saw him drop back, saw the others look sick and frightened, and dropped her own eyes to look in terror at the hand that was clamping her so firmly to the hard chest behind her.
It glittered, almost prettily, with a light of its own. A bone scalpel, wickedly long and sharp, with an edge that would split a hair, and it was pressed against her own chest, pressed so firmly that she could see a deep slit in the starched front of her apron.
In the brief moment, when the four men stood staring in the same sort of paralysed stupefaction she had felt herself, the green gowned figure moved, and moved her with him as though she were no more than a doll.
He moved, in fact, backwards, without any fear, obviously knowing where he was going. She felt him fumble behind himself, felt the sharp cold air as the door swung wide. The balcony, she thought, the balcony and the fire escape.
And then they were out there, out on the cracked tiles of the old balcony, leaning against the rusty iron rails by the fire escape.
He pulled on her, pulled hard, forcing her to cling to the railings, and then, swinging behind her, put his own feet on the first of the narrow fire escape stairs, and pulled her with him.
She looked up, as she felt the inexorable tug of one gloved hand on her waist, and saw Barney’s face peering down at her from the balcony now receding further and further above her, for she was obediently climbing downwards, letting the anonymous figure in the gown guide her. She had no choice, for when she hesitated, even for a second, she felt the edge of the knife against her forearm, the one she was using to try to fend off the gloved hand. And he meant his silent gestures with that knife, she discovered, for when she hesitated momentarily, the knife rested against her skin and she felt a sudden cold-hot pain, and a warm trickle of blood drifted down towards her fingers.
It became nightmarish. She could hear shouts, and there were lights swooping and dancing,
always somehow missing the man who held her in his nutcracker grip. They began to climb again and then went scuttling across some wide open space, and then slithered down a rough incline, and she could smell soot and smoke in the cold early morning air.
And the man who pushed and tugged her along, holding his scalpel constantly against her, filling her with fear of its icy edge, made no sound, spoke not one syllable, not even a grunt.
But she knew he was feeling the strain, could tell by his harsher breathing, and the now and then clumsy movement that betrayed fatigue. She tried to turn her head once, tried to look in his face, but he pushed her head back with such roughness that it made her neck snap, made her feel a sudden sick surge of pain. She didn’t try again.
And then he stopped, and let go of her, and she fell to her knees, to half kneel, half lie, on the rough surface of wherever it was, as she gulped for breath, her terror and the sheer physical effort she had been forced to make robbing her of any feeling but the desperate need to rest.
But after a moment or two she raised her head, and looked up. The gowned figure was bending over a parapet, peering downwards, and she raised herself slowly and awkwardly till she was standing on her feet.
She could see them, quite clearly. Seven storeys below, the courtyard was alive with lights, dancing and sweeping across and upwards, but the overhang of the children’s ward balcony just below cut off the beams that were directed upwards, so they were hidden from the glare.
She turned her head and could see, on the far side of their rooftop—for they were out on the flat leads in the lee of one of the tall ventilation shaft housings that starred the main block of the hospital—the lights of the docks and the faint oily gleam of the river, and the soaring lovely iron lace of dockside cranes.
She had her bearings now. He had managed to pull her from the second floor balcony sideways, across to the transport office roof, up across the engineers’ department, to this vantage point on the roof of the main building. Obviously the searchers hadn’t realised, hadn’t dreamed, that their quarry would go upwards again, after dropping down the fire escape as he had. She was up here, alone on a roof seven storeys above the ground, with a murderer. And no one knew where she was, or was within shouting reach.
Death on the Table Page 14
