George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (18 page)

‘Oh, Gus,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you there!’

‘I told you I’d be back.’ His voice was relaxed, with no undue expression in it, which alerted her. That was never Gus’s normal style; clearly he was put out.

To find Zack here? Maybe, she thought, and smiled brilliantly at him. ‘Gus, this is Dr Zacharius, a colleague. Zack, this is Superintendent Gus Hathaway.’

‘Ah, the famous Gus,’ Zack said, holding out his hand. ‘Great to meet you, sir.’

Gus shook his hand briefly and then shoved both his own
hands back in his trouser pockets, bunching his jacket behind them so that he had a slightly threatening air about him. ‘’Ow do,’ he said abruptly in his most Cockney manner. ‘Dr B., I’ve got a report for you on the car and — and so forth.’

Zack lifted his chin sharply. ‘Really? Sheila’s car? Do tell.’

The look Gus threw at him would have felled an ox at thirty paces. Zack appeared not to notice the venom in it.

‘Police business,’ Gus growled after a moment. ‘Confidential.’

‘Ah. Then I must be on my way.’ Zack smiled warmly. ‘Maybe George’ll let me know what I’m allowed to later, hmm, George? Seeing I was there when the car went up, I’m interested. I take it it
is
Sheila Keen’s car you’re talking about?’

‘Confidential,’ Gus said woodenly.

‘Yes, of course. OK then, George. Sorry about the break-in here. Hope you get it all sorted out soon. I’ll see you at six-thirty in Neuro, and you can fill me in. Oh, and I’ll book that table for nine o’clock. OK? I’ll really look forward to that. So long, Super, great to have met you.’ And he brushed past Gus and was gone, leaving Gus staring at George and looking more truculent than ever.

‘If you’ll forgive a technical term,’ he said after a moment, ‘that fella looks to me what we at the nick would call a right dodgy bugger. Friend of yours, is he?’

‘That is no way to speak of one of my colleagues,’ George said. ‘Dammit all, how can you make a judgement like that just by looking at someone?’

‘Instinct,’ Gus said with sublime assurance. ‘You get an eye for a villain in my business.’

‘And you get an eye for a bigot and a self-satisfied full-of-himself smartass in mine!’ George snapped. ‘There is nothing wrong with Zack at all. He’s an important researcher doing a lot of good work here, which I’ve agreed to help him with, and you’ve no right to jump to your dumb conclusions.’ Then she stopped and a slow smile lifted the corners of her mouth. ‘Unless it’s the old devil speaking in you again? The one that made you do your pieces at Mike that time, because you thought we were having a fling? Jealous, are you, honey?’

‘Never heard such nonsense in my life,’ Gus came right into the room and perched on her desk. ‘Just callin’ the shots the way I see ’em fall. So, OK, he’s wonderful, Cupid on a rock cake. Let’s leave him there. Now, are you interested in the report on the car and the chocolates, or are you not?’

She was interested enough to push his reaction to Zack right to the back of her mind for consideration later. ‘Well? What do they say?’

He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out two sheets of paper and gave them to her.

‘Great!’ She seized the papers and sat down at her desk and read them, and then read them again, even more carefully. ‘Well, that doesn’t take us any place, does it? Nothing on the car, unsurprisingly I dare say any prints would disappear under the weight of that foam they used, and the inside of the thing’d have been pretty well fried clean. I’d hoped there’d be more news on the chocolate box and wrappings though.’

He came round the desk to look over her shoulder at the paper. ‘Me too. But there you have it. The only prints anywhere on the outside are Sister Chaplin’s and Sheila’s, and the nurse who took it to Sheila. Nothing in the interior wrappings either, see? There.’ And he pointed. ‘Just nicotine in every damned chocolate.’

She stared at the paper again and then at him. ‘A dangerous person,’ she said.

‘Very.’ He spoke bleakly. ‘Things like that could have been eaten by anyone. Mind you …’ He shook his head irritably. ‘It doesn’t really make sense. The amount of nicotine in each one is very small, it seems. I know people said it was enough to kill but apparently not. Enough to make anyone who ate one pretty sick, according to the people over at East Ham, but not enough to kill — except perhaps a child or a frail old person. A weak concentration of nicotine, they say, see there?’ Again he pointed to the relevant section of the report.

‘Yeah. And made in the most amateur of ways,’ she said. ‘Did you notice that bit about tobacco shreds? It’s obvious.’

‘He soaked cigarettes —’

‘Or maybe cigars.’

‘Yeah, or maybe pipe tobacco. Whatever. Soaked it for a while in ordinary tap water, boiled it down and there you have it. My old dad used to make a nicotine spray out of fag ends that way for the roses in his garden. Used to chuck ’em into this evil pot of water and leave ’em there till it stank like old fish and looked like elderly pee. I hated it. Mind you, he had wonderful roses. Never a bug on ’em.’

‘I’m sure. And see this?’ She too pointed at the report.
‘Whoever it was didn’t even bother to cover over the marks of whatever it was he used to push the stuff into the chocolates. All he’d have had to do was apply a bit of heat to each puncture and it’d have melted closed. But he swished the stuff in and put the chocolates back in the box, just like that. See what it says? It had leaked out into several of the paper wrappers. I’ve heard of amateur, but this is really the pits.’

He leaned over and pulled forward the other report, the one on the car. ‘Yeah. It’s the same here, in a way.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, Chummy used a piece of cable and a solenoid switch, but not of a calibre big enough to cause more than the sort of shorting that’d melt the casings off the wires. Anyone with a bit of nous wanting to make a car go up would have done it much more efficiently, and probably have destroyed the evidence of what they did at the same time. This system smacks of a kid bent on mischief rather than any real intent to kill.’

She was looking at him with her eyes slightly narrowed and glittering. ‘Are you saying,’ she said slowly after a pause, ‘that neither of these actions were an attempt to kill Sheila? Just to scare her?’

‘I think I am.’

‘Now why should anyone want to do that?’

‘How should I know, doll? If I knew that —’

‘Shut up. I’m thinking aloud.’ She was staring at him now, with her eyes wide and unfocused. ‘What would the point be? To make Sheila so scared she’d — what? Go away, maybe? Leave Old East?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘If I’m allowed to express an opinion, that is.’

She ignored that. ‘But why should someone want to drive her out of Old East? What is it about Sheila that makes her — what’s the term —
persona non grata?’

‘Maybe Chummy plain doesn’t like her. After all, that was why she thought you were involved.’ He smiled at the way
her eyes snapped into focus and glared at him. ‘Just trying to be helpful, doll.’

‘If you want to get rid of someone on your staff, you don’t do it this way. You start to pick holes in their work, or nag ’em or—’

‘Ah,’ he said wisely ‘Constructive dismissal.’

‘Yeah, that’s what the employment tribunals call it. And it works. Lots of people try that on with staff they don’t like. Me, if I wanted to be rid of Sheila, I’d go about it more directly. I’d just tell her so. But I don’t. I need her, dammit. She’s a marvel at her job! We’re missing her badly this week. Good as old Jerry is, he can’t fill her shoes entirely. No, it’s not that. Someone wants her out of the way, but —’

‘But doesn’t want to do her any lasting harm. So, whoever our chap is, he’s the timid type.’

‘Timid?’

‘Mmm. Because if he weren’t he’d go the whole hog and just kill her, wouldn’t he? It would have the desired effect and end his worries. Use a bigger cable on the car, or a stronger solution of nicotine in the chocolates. As it is, he’s no better off than if he never started.’

‘Maybe he’s timid, or maybe he’s just not a killer,’ she said. ‘Not everyone wants to commit murder, for heaven’s sake.’

‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, I dare say not. You do tend to get a warped view of humanity in my job. OK, you have a point. Someone’s trying to scare Sheila away from Old East. Let’s take that as fact.’

‘So, why? That’s the puzzle.’

Gus was very interested now and was sitting half crouched on the edge of the desk, staring down at her. ‘Yeah. Now, there can be all sorts of reasons for that sort of behaviour as well as plain dislike. Fear is one.’

‘Someone’s afraid of Sheila? She can be maddening, I know, but not really threatening, surely?’

‘Not her personally, perhaps. Something she stands for. Something she knows. Something —’

‘Something she has access to!’ George sat up very straight in her chair. ‘Gus, we’re idiots! Here we sit in a room which has been turned over by someone who only showed interest in my files and stole a couple of them — a very specific couple indeed. You said last night that if they’d gone we’d really have one end of the string in our hands.’

‘Then you were right? The other PM notes have gone?’ He was clearly delighted.

‘Yes. I’d have told you sooner, only what with one thing and another —’

‘Your friend Zack being one of them.’

‘With your reports on the car and the chocolates,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s what I said, both files are missing.’

‘Is that what you were discussing with Zack when I came in? Or did you ask him to come over so you could?’

‘He walked in on me while I was still sorting it all out, for God’s sake! So I just said — Oh, Gus, do shut up!’ She shook her head at him irritably. ‘A jokers a joke, but this is too much.’

‘Who’s joking?’ he snapped.

‘Then you
are
jealous! Well, well! I thought you’d learned your lesson about that sort of reaction. You admitted the last time you tried it you were acting like the dumbest of dummies, and now you go and do it again!’

‘I just think that when you’re an item with someone you don’t go making supper dates with a different someone, without consulting the first someone about it first,’ he said with some dignity, an effect which was spoiled by his choice of language. She couldn’t help laughing and that made him scowl more.

‘Oh, Gus, do stop being so stupid. All I’m doing is helping the guy with his research. It’s what doctors do, you know? In fact I’ve agreed to help three of the researchers and he’s one of ’em. And we’ll have to eat, I suppose, so why not go on with the work over food? It’s no big deal. There’s nothing mysterious or suspicious about it.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, still in his dignified manner. She wasn’t deceived; he was jealous, and the truth of the matter was she enjoyed that reaction in him. It both amused and warmed her. Disgraceful, she acknowledged somewhere deep inside, but ignored the thought.

‘Let’s get back to the business of Sheila and what’s happening to her. Two attempts have been made on her that look dangerous — well, they
were
dangerous — but aren’t meant to kill her. The motive is obscure but may be closely linked with the three deaths here that caused all the gossip, as demonstrated by the fact that their files have been stolen —’

‘Run the stories past me again,’ he said suddenly, clearly deciding to be businesslike now. ‘I don’t recall the details.’

‘OK. First was Tony Mendez, theatre porter —’

‘What sort of bloke was he?’

‘Mmm? Tricky apparently. I didn’t know him personally. Bad tempered, not popular. Reformed alcoholic. Well, supposed to be reformed. Clearly he slipped though, and took a drink. Too big a one. He died of alcoholic poisoning.’

‘Alcohol? He must have taken a hell of a big drink to actually die of it!’

‘Not necessarily. If he’d been on the wagon for a few months and then took a drink the size he’d been used to before he stopped — and had an underlying liver problem which I seem to remember he did — then it could have killed him. I remember at the time I reckoned his death was an accident. He collapsed in the middle of a case he was working on with Mayer-France — a gall bladder — and caused a helluva drama there in theatre.’

‘So, he was the first, you say?’

‘Well, he was actually the first we knew about. He collapsed on … let me see. It was a Friday — I remember it was just before the weekend, because Fridays are hectic anyway and an extra PM was one thing I didn’t want because I couldn’t leave it till next morning.’ She reached behind the desk for her calendar and squinted at it. ‘Here we are. The
second of June. I know I had to do the PM late that evening. Remember? We were supposed to be going out.’

‘And I cried off first. Yeah, I remember. You were good and mad. And then it turned out you’d have to cry off yourself anyway.’

‘Well, never mind that. The thing is he died on the Friday. The next case to come up was Lally Lamark. She was found on Monday morning, very dead, on the floor of the Medical Records department. I can remember that I was sure she’d been dead over forty-eight hours. So I reckoned she’d died some time on Friday too, only in the evening, after the department had closed. I thought her death was an accident too: she’d used too much insulin and gone into a coma. And as she was alone, she died very quickly since there was no one to spot she was ill and get her to treatment. Not suicide but an accident.’ She shook her head. ‘At least I don’t have to try to remember that. I can check on her notes when I get home. For the rest, it’s got to be memory.’

‘Which is usually very good,’ he said. ‘In you.’

She sketched a bow of acknowledgement. ‘Well, I’m delighted I can do some things right. Memory doesn’t always work and I’ve done one hell of a lot since then. Remembering the details as I’d like to isn’t as easy as you think.’

‘Still, we can investigate in other ways. What about the last one?’

‘Oh, yes, Pam Frean. That was a definite suicide. She, I recall very well.’ She made a face, angry again for the girl. ‘It was so dreadfully sad and unnecessary. She was pregnant, came from a very religious family and couldn’t take the pressure. So she killed herself in a most unpleasant way.’