A Bleeding of Innocents (16 page)

‘Then I'm glad to have saved you the trouble,' spat Carney.

They weren't making a great deal of progress, but Shapiro was aware of having Carney rattled and wanted to press the advantage. Even if there was nothing between Carney and Board there was so much else the man might say if he was angry enough.

‘You see my position,' he said. ‘Three people have been killed in this town in the past week. As you and I very well know, you'd good reason for wanting Alan Clarke dead. And the other victims were the surgeon who operated on him and the wife of the man you hired as a pilot. Coincidence? Convince me.'

‘Convince you?' It came out midway between a sneer and a snarl. ‘I don't need to convince you of anything. Who are you that I should care what you think? I suppose there's a certain novelty value in a Yid detective, all very Opportunities for the Ethnics I'm sure. But if I decide I've had enough of this I'll break you. Then you'll find out how many friends you have, in and out of the Force. The only thing that'll save you then'll be an emergency induction into the Masons. And I don't think you're eligible for that, are you?'

Frank Shapiro had been insulted more subtly and therefore more effectively than that in his years as a policeman. He'd met prejudice from colleagues as well as from criminals, and found that infinitely harder to deal with. When a man was very probably a murderer it seemed silly to add, ‘And what's more he's anti-Semitic!'

But he didn't have to like it, and he didn't have to take it sitting down. He too came to his feet, his thick body looming over the little Regency desk. ‘Shall I tell you something about coppers, Mr Carney?' He made it sound like a very quiet threat. ‘A lot of them don't like Jews. A lot of them don't like blacks. Quite a few of them don't like women, and almost none of them like the Irish. But the one thing they have in common, and this applies to every member of every police force in Britain, is that none of them will put up with dirty little toe-rags who think they're immune to the law and they can grind other coppers into brick walls – even Irish coppers, even Jewish coppers – with impunity. You want to take me on, Mr Carney, go right ahead. But don't think you can take me on alone.'

He left then. He hadn't learned very much more about Carney. But perhaps Carney had learned something about him.

Donovan went to the Feyd Clinic first thing on Wednesday morning. Liz arranged for a young constable to drive him. The constable stopped feeling this was an honour before they'd gone the first mile. Donovan was a terrible back-seat driver and leaned into the curves.

The clinic occupied a choice spot overlooking the Levels, a green sea touched with bronze. The expensive rooms at the front enjoyed a view all the way to the same River Arrow which, miles further up its course, wandered through the water-meadows where Kerry Page made love and died. The cheaper rooms overlooked the car park, the road, and an electricity sub-station.

It was a smaller establishment than Donovan had expected, a low concrete box designed along minimalist lines, apparently by the same man who thought of nouvelle cuisine and charging more and more for less and less swimwear. In town it would have looked like a Social Services office. Out here amid the green, in an odd way it worked rather better. It was simple enough to slot into the landscape instead of imposing on it.

Whatever money was saved by leaving the outside plain had been spent in the foyer. There was money on the walls, on the floor, in the furnishings, and behind reception. The effect was discreet, professional, reassuring. You could tell from the spring in the carpet that the people here would give you a nose job you'd never forget.

The Feyd Clinic was owned by the same group as the Rosedale Nursing Home. It was to the field of cosmetic surgery and other fashionable treatments what Rosedale was to the care of the elderly: Rolls-Royce provision carrying a happy few up the fast lane while the National Health Service bus trundled along behind. The group offered top jobs and could afford to hand-pick its employees; indeed, could hardly afford not to. Any suspicions about Dr Saunders couldn't have reached the ears of the appointments committee.

Donovan asked for Saunders at the desk. The expensive receptionist rang his office but his secretary wasn't expecting him. ‘He was in his consulting room until six o'clock last night,' she said, quite breathlessly, as if this were a marathon session by Clinic standards. Perhaps it was. They wouldn't do many emergency face-lifts.

The receptionist wrote Dr Saunders'home address on a card. ‘Shall I phone and see if he's in, Sergeant?'

‘No, thanks.' The less time Emil Saunders had to think what he would say to the police the happier Donovan would be.

Castle General was everything the Feyd Clinic was not: a rambling metropolis of a hospital, the oldest buildings of smoke-blackened Victorian brick with additions of every period since – substantial stucco from between the wars, worthy red brick from the fifties, a poorly conceived and worse executed tower-block from the seventies, and a dear little Arts and Crafts dentistry department – all dropped on to the campus as if from a height, landing at odd angles and with no regard for the relationship of one to the next. An accident victim with both burns and fractures could have such a journey between clinics that it was expedient to hail a passing ambulance. Someone on a geriatric ward who still had enough teeth to visit the dentist could die in transit.

After the tower-block went up the site was full. Apart from the odd angles between the buildings, used for car parking, there was no room for further development. So when the next round of cottage-hospital closures increased the need for maternity, geriatric, and casualty beds at Castle General, patients were housed in the car parks, in prefabricated shells with consultants' BMWs and nurses' 2CVs for company.

Liz, appalled by the scale and confusion of the site, hardly knew where to start. She stopped a man in a white coat and asked where the chief administrator's office was, and the man pondered a moment and said he thought it was in the Victorian part though he once heard a rumour about it being in a red-brick annexe behind the tower-block. Then he asked if she knew the way out. He said he'd come here for his holiday jabs and been trying to leave ever since. Liz guessed then that he was joking, but clearly she was not the first person to have been overwhelmed by the chaotic architecture.

Mr Hawley's office was indeed in the Victorian core of the hospital. He greeted her with a formal inclination of the head. ‘I'm not sure what you're looking for but my secretary and I will give whatever assistance we can.'

Liz smiled disarmingly. ‘I'm not altogether sure what I'm looking for either. But it does seem a coincidence. In view of what's happened, and the possibility that it's not over yet, I think we have to explore every avenue.'

Even Castle General had been computerized for more than four years so the records she was interested in were on disk. Hawley eyed the hardware as if he still didn't quite trust it and said, ‘Are you familiar with the equipment? Miss McNair will operate it if you'd rather.'

‘Thanks.' If there was one thing Liz's time at Headquarters had fitted her for it was extracting information from computers. But it's a rash policeman who turns down an offer of help. She would take over when the answers started coming.

Hawley excused himself and went to withdraw to his inner sanctum. But Liz, almost without seeming to move, barred his way, slipping her jacket on to the back of a chair. She was as tall as him and her eyes caught and held his frosty gaze – Donovan was right, however polite he might seem he resented her being here, even at his invitation. She said, ‘Mr Hawley, if you knew why Mrs Board's team broke up four years ago – even if it couldn't have anything to do with what happened to her and Kerry Page – you'd tell me, wouldn't you?'

His eyes didn't flinch. ‘Naturally.'

Liz nodded slowly, still watching him. ‘It's a matter of priorities, isn't it? In normal circumstances a degree of discretion about colleagues'failings would be appropriate. But different circumstances put a different complexion on it. If there's any chance at all of people being hurt, no responsible person would put loyalty to a colleague above their duty to prevent that. I'm sure you'd agree, Mr Hawley.'

Hawley seemed to swell with indignation but retained a rigid control of his voice. ‘I hope I know my duty as well as you do, Inspector. I will tell you again what I told your sergeant. I don't know who shot either Mrs Page or Mrs Board, and I don't know why. If there are any clues in our records I hope you'll find them. I've given it some thought, without success. But then, detection is your job. Mine is running a hospital.'

She learned nothing from reading the records, but then she had not expected to. She had Miss McNair print out details of the operations carried out by Maggie Board, Emil Saunders, and Kerry Carson in their last month together. If a mistake had occurred the consequences might not have shown at once. Also it would have taken time to arrange new schedules. Even a surgeon of Board's eminence could hardly have thrown her anaesthetist and nurse bodily out of her theatre without explaining why, which plainly she had not done.

Liz wanted to talk to the chief administrator again. She didn't believe that he knew nothing of what must have been a significant upset within his period of office. But she needed a name to throw at him, and while that name was probably there in the records she had no way of recognizing it yet.

She wondered how Donovan was getting on with Dr Saunders, if the anaesthetist was any more forthcoming. He might be. If he was not himself the killer he must have noticed that he was now the only survivor of the surgical team. Liz was sure of one thing. If Saunders hadn't yet thought that he might be the next victim, Donovan would make sure he thought about it now.

In its heyday Castlemere was one of the most prosperous small towns in England. It stood at the junction of canals connecting London with the growing industrial centres of the Midlands and those feeding westward towards the ports of the Bristol Channel. This brought the world to its door and the small traders of Castlemere developed first into larger traders and then into genuine merchants to take advantage of the fact. They built warehouses and mills, iron-works and tanneries. They cornered the boot and shoe industry. When the first railways cast a cloud over the thriving canals they hedged their bets by bringing in the railway too.

And when their prosperity was assured, they built houses. They built rows of little millworkers'houses under the shadow of the great mills they served. They built a neat greystone house for the canal superintendent and a red-brick one for the station-master. They built rows of pretty alms cottages to show that they had hearts of gold beating under their Albert chains.

For themselves they built mansions. They were Victorian mansions to be sure, solid and comfortable but less grandiose than the country seats with which earlier merchant princes had equipped themselves. For the most part these Victorian entrepreneurs had risen from humble roots and took a perverse pride in their lack of breeding. Their homes were still big enough to house a dozen millworkers' families in unaccustomed luxury.

When the canals stagnated in the second half of the nineteenth century, and a hundred years later the railways met a similar fate, the factory owners'families moved on so that many of their mansions stood empty and derelict. Some were demolished, others were converted to hotels, to offices, and to flats.

Emil Saunders had a penthouse flat in the most prestigious of these surviving mansions, an ugly but imposing square-built edifice of iron-black brick called Fairbairn House. It had a small park set with mature trees and sweeping lawns which, since the lease included the employment of a gardener, could be enjoyed without labour. Because of its elevation, Dr Saunders' flat had a stunning view down the lawns and between the trees to the glint of a small lake close to the boundary.

But Dr Saunders was not enjoying his view today. There was no answer to Donovan's rap at his door. Donovan tried again but heard no sound of stirring. Irritated, he went back downstairs. A man was passing a desultory rag over the communal brasswork in the hall. ‘Do you know when Dr Saunders'll be back?'

The hall porter glanced at the grandfather clock under the stairs. ‘Depends how much he's got to do. Five minutes if he's only gone for his paper, an hour if it's his weekly shop. You only just missed him.'

For five minutes it wasn't worth coming back. Donovan thought he'd spend the time gathering background information. ‘Known him long, have you – Dr Saunders?'

‘He's been here about five years. Most days I say “Good morning” to him once and “Good evening” to him once. Does that constitute knowing a man?'

Donovan recognized the hall porter as a philosopher. ‘Had any problems with him?'

‘No. Well, you wouldn't expect to, professional gent like that. He meets his obligations, he's polite to his neighbours, he remembers the staff at Christmas. What else is there to say? Once Miss Duke's car wouldn't start and he gave her a lift into town. She asked how she could repay him, and he said she could return the favour some day when the Porsche wouldn't start.'

‘And?'

‘The Porsche always starts.'

‘Funny,' said Donovan, ‘I had the idea he was a bit of a ladies' man.'

If the porter felt any reluctance to gossip about his residents he didn't let it hinder him. ‘Dr Saunders? You've got the wrong man, squire. Or if he is he never brings them home. Doesn't bring anybody home much. Not one of the world's great socializers. He has his colleagues round for a party every New Year, otherwise he doesn't get many visitors. I don't think he rates stars in anybody's little black book.'

It had been ten minutes and there was no sign of the Porsche. ‘OK,' decided Donovan. ‘I've another call to make down the hill. I'll be back here in an hour, that should give him time to pack his freezer. If he looks he's going out, ask him to wait – otherwise don't bother him.' He meant, and the hall porter knew he meant, Don't tell him I was here.