Chilling Out

by Andrew Puckett

  'Oh,' Tom said.

  'Yes. Which brings us to why you are here – '

  There was a light knock on the door and the receptionist returned with what looked like a silver tray.

  'On the coffee table, please, Emma,' Lady Margaret told her. The tray was deposited between them and Emma departed as discreetly as she had arrived. 'I'll be mother, shall I?'

  A less motherly person than Lady Margaret Tom could scarcely imagine. Immaculately permed grey hair (with not a trace of blue) crowned her long, appropriately equine face (she owned a racing stable) and she was dressed in a severe white blouse and tweed skirt. The coffee was delicious.

  'Did your newspaper say why Dr Goring was in Tamar?' she asked Tom.

  'To take part in a TV programme about the Transfusion Service, I believe.' He knew perfectly well.

  'Yes. It was ill advised and I told him so, but he was always obstinate. He was convinced he could scotch a problem we had – and still have – there once and for all. I think at this stage I'd better give you some of the background…'

  She told them how the Blood Division had been instructed by the previous government to make the Blood Service more efficient and, at the same time, cut £10 million from its £135 million budget.

  'A tall order, as you can imagine,' she said, 'but that's what we're paid for.'

  The only way it could be done, she explained, was to close five of the fifteen centres and use the money saved to buy in a computer system that would link the remaining ten.

  'Initially, there was a lot of resistance to this, but we'd overcome most of it. Except in one place – Tamar…'

  She told them how Jessie had organised her campaign and become a major thorn in their corporate flesh, culminating in the live TV debate.

  'I warned Adam that no good would come of it, but he insisted on accepting their invitation.' She sighed, told them about Jessie's allegation of nepotism at the end of the programme.

  'He lost his temper, which made him look guilty – his temper was always his Achilles' heel. I telephoned him, told him that I'd told him so, and he said he was going to put it right before going to America. The next thing I heard he was dead.'

  'Are the details as reported in the papers correct?' Tom asked.

  'That he was locked into a freezer in the Tamar centre and froze to death, yes…'

  Marcus glanced quickly at Tom as she said this, but Tom's face was inscrutable – he'd once been trapped in the same freezer and had been lucky to escape.

  'You'll have to ask the police about the rest,' Lady Margaret said. Her voice was quavering slightly and they realised that she was human after all, that she'd been genuinely fond of Goring.

  'Would you like some more coffee?' she said. Her voice was under control now, although her eyes were bright. Marcus declined and Tom accepted.

  The police were confident of finding the killer, she told them, but had warned her not to expect an early arrest.

  'Our problem is that while this uncertainty drags on, we can't lay the allegation of nepotism to rest. It's been very damaging – we've already had one of the other centres due to close claim that it's being done simply to pay off old scores. I'd like you to go down to Tamar and sort it out for us as quickly as possible.' She looked from one to the other of them. 'Please.'

  'From what you say,' Marcus said, 'the allegation is more important to you than the murder.'

  She compressed her lips before speaking. 'So far as the Blood Division's concerned, the murder is a matter for the police – officially. But since they may well be linked, it could mean, in effect, that you're looking for the killer as well.'

  'I'd have thought you could have checked the allegation for yourselves. To an extent, anyway.'

  'And so we have, to an extent. Mike Derby, Adam's son-in-law, freely admits he'd have liked the research director's job, but says he didn't discuss it with Adam until after the closure was announced. Charles Goldman, the director at East Dorset, says he didn't discuss it with Adam at any time. That, of course, does not solve our problem.'

  'Was it Dr Goring who actually chose which centres were to close?'

  'In effect, yes. In theory, it was a joint decision, but as Medical Executive, Adam clearly knew more than the rest of us and we took his advice. I have to say that he made a perfectly good case for the closure of Tamar,' she added.

  'What do you think, Lady Margaret?' Marcus asked. 'Could he have been… influenced in his decision?'

  'I really wouldn't have thought so.' She hesitated. 'Adam Goring could be a hard, sometimes even a ruthless man, but I find it very difficult to believe that he was actually corrupt.'

  'You realise that, whatever we discover, it may well be impossible to actually prove anything either way?'

  Yes, she did realise that, she told them, but Sheila Castleton had been happy with their efforts. 'I can only ask that you try.'

  'And if we do find he was corrupt?'

  'I'll take that risk.'

  Marcus nodded slowly. 'Anything you'd like to ask, Tom?'

  As Tom turned to her, the leather of the armchair made a slight farting noise. 'Er – have you spoken to the police about our involvement, Lady Margaret?' He wondered why it was that although both he and Marcus spoke with London accents, his always seemed to sound the more vulgar in his ears.

  'Yes. I know the Chief Constable of Devon quite well, and he's perfectly agreeable.'

  'Good,' Tom said, thinking, But what about the Indians?

  Lady Margaret was smiling a tight little smile. 'He's not aware yet, of course, of your – how did Sheila put it? – your rather bracing style of interview, your propensity for puncturing egos…'

  Marcus's lips compressed as Tom said, 'Are you saying, Lady Margaret, that I should modify my –?'

  'No, I'm not, Mr Jones. Sheila said that you got results where the police had failed, and that's what I'm interested in – results.'

  Tom nodded his thanks, then allowed his gaze to drift over the room as Marcus and Lady Margaret settled administrative details… rosewood desk, thick carpet, real oil paintings, Irvine wallpaper… then Marcus was assuring her they would keep in touch and they stood to go. Downstairs, they shrugged into overcoats and a footman opened the door for them.

  'How the other half work, eh?' Tom observed as they crossed the small formal garden to the cast iron railings dividing it from the street.

  'Mm,' Marcus said non-committally as they started up Whitehall. 'Your reputation seems to have gone before you.'

  'How d'you mean?'

  'Your bracing style of interview.'

  'Oh, that.'

  Marcus smiled, then said more seriously, 'How d'you feel about going back to Tamar?'

  'It's not Tamar as such that bothers me.'

  'The centre? Its memories?'

  Tom nodded. 'Yes, those… but mostly its contents.'

  'Ah.'

  Tom's younger brother Frank, now dead from AIDS, had been a haemophiliac and when they were boys, Tom had often been blamed when Frank had a bleed. The beatings his father meted out had resulted in a lifelong phobia of the sight of blood that he'd never quite managed to overcome…

  Marcus touched his shoulder. 'You'll be all right. You told me it gets a bit better every time, didn't you?'

  'Yeah.' Except that I was lying…

  The plane trees stood bare and etched against the pale blue sky and a brisk east wind hustled them along the pavement.

  Marcus turned to him again: 'Has Holly said anything to you about the reorganisation, all the transfusion centres closing?' Tom's wife Holly worked in a hospital lab.

  'Yes. It's caused a lot of problems already.'

  'What sort of problems?'

  'Shortages of blood and delays in getting it to the hospitals. There's been a decrease in the number of donors too, but that's only part of it – the new computer system Lady M. mentioned apparently isn't all it was cracked up to be. The irony is,' he continued after a pause, 'that they'll probably end up havi
ng to spend a lot more to sort it all out than the ten mill they've saved.'

  Marcus nodded. 'That's what usually happens when you fix something that ain't broke.'

  They reached their own building and went up to Marcus's office.

  'You know what this is really all about, don't you?' he said.

  Tom waited.

  'It's politics. Our New Masters have spotted the chance of slinging some more ordure at the Old Lot and Lady M. is to be the target.'

  'And she's seen it coming and wants me to catch it for her,' Tom said gloomily. He looked up suddenly. 'If that's true, Marcus, if it's political, then we shouldn't have anything to do with it, should we?'

  Marcus thought about it. 'No, it's OK,' he said, 'because we're not actually doing it for her. There's a real possibility of high-level corruption here and that's what you'll be looking for. Nice try, though,' he added after a pause.

  Chapter Eleven

  Holly's parents still lived near Tamar and when Tom told her about the job, she insisted they stay with them.

  'They haven't seen Hal for ages,' she said. 'And think of the money you'll save.'

  'The department'll save,' Tom grumbled, 'not me.' He got on well enough with Kath and Henry Jordan, his in-laws, but he'd always felt that the maxim of guests being like fish (they go off after a couple of days) worked both ways – besides which, they didn't like the smell of his cheroots. Which was why now, on Sunday morning, as he passed through the gates of Sticklepath, the Jordan smallholding, and pointed the Cooper at Tamar, he told himself to think of it as another incentive to get the job done quickly. They'd driven down on Saturday and Bennett had agreed to meet him today.

  Tom had felt almost as apprehensive as Bennett when he'd heard that he was in charge of the case, the same who'd been so irritated by his contribution a few years earlier, and he wondered how many other ghosts would be putting in an appearance this time round.

  He was shown into Bennett's office almost straight away.

  'Have a seat, Mr Jones.' Bennett indicated the chair in front of his desk.

  Tom sat. 'It's been a long time, inspector.'

  'Indeed it has,' Bennett said cursorily, obviously not wanting to dwell on it. He hadn't offered to shake hands, either.

  Tom mentally shrugged – if that was the way he wanted it… He studied the other's face, wondering whether he'd have recognised Bennett if they'd met in the street. Probably not, he thought, his hair and moustache were both nearly white now, and the skin more heavily lined… although, as he looked, the strongly musteline flavour of his face seemed familiar. Strange, people say I'm like a stoat, maybe it's something detectives have in common…

  'Shall we get started?' Bennett broke in on his thoughts. He had a distinct, though not unpleasant, Devon accent.

  'Fine.'

  'I'll take you through what we've done so far, then we'll go to the centre for you to have a look at the SOC.'

  He described the discovery of the body, Randall's efforts to ascertain the cause of death and how he, Bennett, had realised as soon as he'd seen the freezing-room with its faulty door that Goring must have died there.

  'No chance it was an accident?' Tom asked.

  'I'd have thought you, of all people, would have realised the odds against that,' Bennett said in his first direct reference to Tom's earlier involvement. 'No one going in there on their own would shut the door under any circumstances, let alone when there was a notice on it warning that the handle wasn't working.'

  'No,' Tom agreed.

  'And the fuse for the siren had been dislodged, so he couldn't raise the alarm once he was in there.'

  'So you think it was premeditated?'

  'I'll come to that in a minute.' He told Tom how he'd interviewed all the staff and come to the conclusion that Jessie had the strongest motive… 'Find the motive and you've nearly always got your killer, alibi or no alibi.'

  'Goring had her suspended, you said?'

  'He was going to have her sacked, Mr Jones, and after that, he was going to sue her. Look, why don't you judge for yourself while I get some tea for us.' He opened a drawer and took out a video cassette. 'This is the TV interview where she accused him of rigging the closure.'

  He switched on the monitor, gave it a few seconds to warm up, then pushed in the cassette. 'D'you take sugar?'

  Tom hesitated – he loathed police tea. 'Would you mind if I had coffee?'

  'It'll have to be instant.'

  'That's fine.'

  Bennett left the room as Cool Suzee was introducing Goring and Jessie. Tom studied them, glad to have the opportunity to put a living face to the dead victim, since one of his own beliefs was that murder victims often carry the seeds of their destruction within them.

  Bennett came back half-way through and they watched in silence as the interview built up to its crescendo.

  'See what I mean?'

  'Well, they didn't like each other much, did they?'

  'Not a lot, no. Want to see it again?'

  'I think I will, if you don't mind.'

  Bennett obviously hadn't been expecting this, but he rewound the video and pressed the start button. Tom studied it intently, making notes, asking to go back once or twice.

  Bennett stirred his tea. As the video finished, he said, 'Immediately after that, Goring had her suspended and then told the director that she was to be fired come what may. Even told him to find the evidence to help him do it.'

  'But did she know the full extent to which he was gunning for her?'

  'Oh yes, Dr Medlar told her that afternoon. Dr Goring was a powerful man and it was a foregone conclusion that he'd get his way. She'd have been ruined.'

  'So why haven't you arrested her?'

  Bennett sighed. 'Because she's got an alibi for the time he was killed.' He told Tom about Jessie's domestic spat with Craig and her spending the night with Verity.

  'Couldn't they both be involved?' Tom asked.

  'That's possible, of course, but so long as they stick to their story, difficult to prove.'

  'Another thing,' Tom said, 'how could she of all people have persuaded Goring to walk into a freezer?'

  'I don't know,' Bennett admitted.

  'And why use such an esoteric method of killing him?'

  He hesitated. 'I had wondered about the fact that with the body frozen, the actual time of death would be next to impossible to work out.'

  'But I can't see how that would help her… I mean, wouldn't she want to make it look as though it had been done at a time for which she had an alibi?'

  'Yes, and it was almost certainly done on Friday night.'

  'Almost certainly?'

  Bennett told him about their enquiries at the hotel. 'For practical purposes we can assume he was killed then.'

  'So why was the body dumped in the river?'

  'I can only assume that the killer realised it hadn't been discovered and did it to confuse us.'

  'But think about it – moving a frozen body without being seen, it's a hell of risk to take… Were any of the staff in over the weekend?'

  Bennett told him about Jessie and Maria.

  Tom thought for a moment. 'Whoever shut him in the freezer did it without being seen, and the same could apply when they took him out. So it doesn't necessarily have to be one of those two.'

  'Not necessarily, no,' agreed Bennett.

  He took Tom through every stage of his investigation and gave him copies of all the relevant statements.

  'He can't have enjoyed telling you about that,' Tom observed, on learning of Medlar's indiscretion.

  'Any more than he'll enjoy telling you, I imagine,' Bennett said with the ghost of a smile.

  'No.' Tom looked down the list of names. 'Don't any of these others have a possible motive – anything?'

  'Not really, no. Goring was widely disliked, but not so much as to be worth killing for.' He continued slowly, 'The only one would be Medlar, if Goring had somehow found out about his affair with Miss N'Kanu. But since he
volunteered the information, I didn't think so.'

  'No,' Tom said thoughtfully. He looked up. 'So was it premeditated, d'you think?'

  Bennett hesitated. 'If I was planning to kill someone, that wouldn't be the way I'd do it. There are so many variables – I could so easily be seen going into the centre with Goring, leaving without him for that matter… Look, why don't we go up there now and you'll see what I mean?'

  They went in separate cars.

  Tom had more or less resigned himself to the fact that he would never completely conquer his haemophobia, the quaking, gut-liquefying terror of the sight, even the proximity of blood. It isn't as though I haven't tried, he told himself as he stopped the car and gazed up at the Great White Elephant On The Hill. It's just that… It was just that every time he had to face it anew, it felt like starting all over again.

  Tamar Hospital was one of the last of the mega-hospitals planned in the sixties and stood unabashed and defiant, like a fortress, its white tiled facades glinting in the winter sunshine. Tom didn't like it now any more than he had those years ago on his first major job for Marcus, but there was no doubt it had completely changed his life. It was where he'd taken his first steps towards facing his phobia instead of hiding it, and it had led to his reconciliation with his brother. It was where he'd met Holly.

  He sighed, restarted the car and drove up. Bennett was waiting for him outside the main entrance.

  'What kept you?'

  'Got lost. Sorry.' Lost in the past…

  Bennett grunted, walked over to the door and pressed the intercom button. It squawked back at him almost immediately.

  'Yes-can-I-help-you?'

  He identified himself; about half a minute later, the door opened and they were admitted by a disgruntled Arthur – he was having to work extra because of Craig's desertion.

  'Mr Tudor wants to see you,' he told Bennett.

  'Oh, he does, does he?' Bennett muttered.

  They followed Arthur along the wide corridor. The smells were the same and Tom swallowed and gritted his teeth. There had been changes, he noticed. Blood Issue, Cross Matching and the manager's office seemed to have been swapped around – were there any more?