George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (23 page)

She stopped and bit her lip for a moment. ‘Usually when you read notes you just take in factors. You don’t think about the personalities involved because there is rarely much guidance on that. Doctors aren’t encouraged to write down their subjective opinion of patients the way they used to, not now patients have the right of access to their notes. But we should — because when I looked and thought a bit more I got a picture of a woman who knew her own condition very well. She’d had it most of her life, dammit. Probably knew more about her own diabetes, and diabetes in general, than her doctors did. And the fact that she asked Sheila to show her a path, report on her own blood sugar and insulin levels and assorted assays makes me think —’

‘She asked Sheila what?’ Gus was even more alert now.

George sighed. ‘I hadn’t told you that yet,’ she said. ‘It’s all been so — Well, never mind. Sheila had a flaming row with the head of the Medical Records department a while back, as a result of which I got embroiled and Sheila and I fell out. That’s the background. The reason for the fight with Elles-mere was that Lally Lamark had asked Sheila to show her her path, reports — her own, you understand — because she was suspicious about something to do with — well, we just don’t know what. All I know is that Sheila did show Lally her records
and refused to show Ellesmere when she demanded to be told. Ellesmere’s just nosy, I think, likes to be involved in everything, and got mad when Sheila blocked her. But the nub of it all is, this woman Lamark was suspicious about something to do with her doctor’s care.’

‘And then died of an overdose of insulin. It was that, you said when you first told me about it.’

‘Mmm. I put it down to an accident, but if Lally really was a mavin about diabetes, really understood her condition, there’s no way she’d have an accident with her insulin. But maybe someone arranged things so that it
looked
like an accident.’

‘So you’re saying …’

‘I haven’t finished,’ she said. ‘I’m saying that I’m no longer sure of my own reports when I did those PMs. I thought one was a stupid overdose, another an accident. And I thought that one, Pam Frean, was a suicide. Now I’m wondering about all three of them. Could they have been deliberate killings? And could they be linked with these other — what did you call them? — clumsy attempts? Are we looking at one set of linked events rather than a series of separate ones?’

There was a silence and then he said, ‘Um,’ and lapsed into silence again.

She waited but he just sat there lost in a maze of his own thinking, until she said sharply, ‘Well? Um, what?’

‘Um is all. Except that I’ve been thinking something along these lines myself.’

She was nettled. ‘I see, Mr Omniscient, eh?’

‘No,’ he said mildly. ‘Just Mr Experienced. And I have to tell you it is as rare as hen’s teeth to have a series of nasty events, especially including deaths, on the same premises and all with different causes. They have to be linked if only by copy-catting, or so goes my experience.’

‘Oh,’ she said and subsided. ‘Well, yes, I guess so. I was thinking that sort of thing too.’

Now it was her turn to be silent and he looked at her and waited. And then said simply, ‘You’d better spit it out’

‘Spit what out?’

‘Whatever it is you think you ought to tell me but don’t really want to, either because you feel a bit daft saying it or because you want to deal with it on your own. If it’s the first, forget it. Nothing you do say or think is ever daft in my eyes. Misguided and due to conclusion-jumping maybe, but never daft. And if it’s a case of preferring to do it alone, do me a favour and forget that too. We always do better as a team.’ He spoke more loudly as she opened her mouth to protest. ‘I know, I know, it was different last time, that business at Connie’s factory, but we’re not talking about that. I’m talking about the here and now. And right now, you ought to spit it out’

She shook her head in mingled irritation and relief. ‘Oh, you are the — All right. It’s not easy and if you make any of your nasty cracks, I’ll probably hit you. Just hear me out.’ She took a deep breath and tried to find the best way to start and of course it all came out wrong. ‘Zack Zacharius. I know you’ve been a bit jealous of him but —’

He flared up at once. ‘Jealous? Me? I haven’t got a jealous bone in my body! I may know the difference between what’s proper behaviour and what isn’t but that ain’t got a thing to do with being jealous, and never you say it has! And anyway, what has that cock-eyed sod got to do with —’

‘Oh, shit,’ she said. ‘I knew I’d get it all wrong! Listen, will you? I think maybe … I’m worried that he might be involved with all this.’

She almost laughed then. She had never seen him quite so surprised by anything in all the years she had known him and she let herself grin at the sight of his face.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said after a moment. ‘Bloody hell! I thought you had a fancy for him.’

‘I did,’ she said calmly. ‘He’s a dishy fella.’

‘Well, thank you very much, ducks. What am I supposed to say to that?’

‘You can start worrying the day I stop noticing which are the attractive men,’ she said, feeling better than she would have thought possible. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so very comfortable with him; it was an agreeable sensation. ‘The important thing is I come back to you, however much I might enjoy the passing scenery. And don’t tell me you never notice what other women look like. I’ve seen you with your fangs dripping, you pant so hard when some bouncy bottom goes by. But I’ve got more sense than to fret over it.’

He shook his head, as much to clear his thinking as to disagree with her. ‘That’s something to talk about some other time,’ he said with dignity. ‘Tell me now what you mean about this fella. Has he said something? Done something? Come on, doll, don’t torment me!’

She was sober again at once. ‘It’s no one thing exactly. Well, maybe it was last night … Look, he asked me to come and advise him on his research. I told you that and it was perfectly true. I thought that was all that he wanted and maybe a silly flirty dinner afterwards, and what harm would there be there? Especially if you were doing your famous porcupine-in-a-pet act at me. But when it came to it, he set me up.’

He frowned, never taking his eyes from her face. ‘How?’

She explained as best she could, but it wasn’t easy. ‘You don’t understand this business of research grants,’ she told him. ‘The thing is, unless the Institute can get at least two big projects funded from outside, it’ll die. The consultants and the people involved — the Professor, the research fellows — will all lose a hell of a lot of face, as well as their income. The hospital will lose a good deal of status too, and in these days of marketing hospital services because the NHS is run like a market, status is valuable. Loss of it could reduce the number of patients referred to us. So the Institute’s survival matters. And all Zack wanted to use me for was to prod the other two researchers so that they came up with a research protocol that could lead to the discovery — or development’d be a
better word — of a highly profitable drug. That’s the bottom line for him. Money. And I hadn’t realized that till last night.’

‘Is that the only thing that makes you suspicious?’ he said after a while.

‘Not the only thing, no. It’s all a bit nebulous, that’s the trouble, but I just feel … well, look at what facts there are. He’s been around all the time when things have happened. When Sheila’s car went up, there he was in the car park. He gave me a very good reason for being there — it was the same as my own, in that he kept his car there and he needed to get it out, and also he said he wanted to get it out to pick me up at the Institute instead of having to walk together all through the hospital and make people gossip. We’d arranged to go out for a drink after the Professor’s party, you see.’ Gus’s brows furrowed for a moment, but she just went on, pretending she hadn’t noticed, and slowly he relaxed.

‘Then, with the business of Sheila’s chocolates, he was in and out of Ballantyne Ward to see her as much as the rest of us — as me even, although he’d never even met her before the event. He just sort of latched on. And then he turned up here at the lab the day after the break-in and the messing-up of my files and — Oh, I don’t
know.
It sounds so little now I’ve spelled it out, but last night it seemed to me to be so important …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘And it may well be important,’ he said. ‘I have to agree if that’s all there is, then it doesn’t add up to much. But I like circumstantial pointers as much as the next man. It’s just circumstantial evidence I can’t be doing with. But maybe his behaviour can point us towards something concrete. Hmm. Let me think…’

‘I’ve been thinking too,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a couple of ideas you might like to try.’

‘I’ll bet you have. Like what?’

‘I don’t feel comfortable about this but — make a deal with me, Gus. If I point you in an actual direction and it turns out
I’m wrong, you’ll never let on to him I suspected him, will you? I’d hate that.’

‘Why? Don’t want to hurt little diddums’ feelings, is it?’ He sounded extra sardonic and she grimaced at him.

‘You see what I mean? You always jump to the worst possible conclusion. It’s because the man’s a colleague, dammit. I’ll have to go on working in this place with him afterwards. If he turns out to be straight up but he finds out I fingered him as a bad lot, then …’

‘It’d be embarrassing.’

‘Yes.’

‘Stop his Dishiness from asking you out to dinner again?’

‘Oh, the hell with it. If the best you can do is make snide cracks like that, let’s forget it!’ The good feelings she had about him began to dilute and she scowled. At first he scowled back but then relaxed, slowly.

‘Oh, shit!’ he said after a while. ‘Maybe I am a bit jealous at that.’

‘Wow,’ she said, staring upwards with studied concern. ‘Where are the flying pigs? Watch out below!’

‘The time for you to start worrying is when I’m not jealous,’ he snapped. ‘Isn’t that what you said to me? So, goose and gander, OK? And truce, fainites, Tom Tiddler’s ground and all that. What is it you want me to do?’

She was mollified. ‘It’s not what I want you to do. It’s just a suggestion.’

‘So suggest it’

‘He said he’s a Canadian. Trained there, did some important work there. Well, maybe it’d be worth doing a check-up to make sure that all the things he says about himself are true.’

‘Is there any reason to doubt they are?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know. He seems to be abreast of his subject as far as I can tell, though as I’m no neurologist, how can I say for sure? But it seems to me that he’s excessively nervous about the possibility of losing this chance for the Institute
and I wondered why. I thought maybe he was embroidering his CV, making himself out to be something he isn’t? It’s hell being in research. You can’t be a researcher in the accepted sense of the term till you publish a worthwhile paper in an important journal of record, and you can’t get such a paper published until you’re a researcher. Sometimes I suspect people cut corners. Scientific fraud isn’t unheard of. There was that chap who made claims about fertility research, and got himself struck off the register, remember? Maybe Zack’s in that mould. Maybe he’s trying something on here. If we check his past and find out he isn’t all he claims to be, well, we’re on our way.’

He thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘OK, doll. That makes good sense to me. And tell me, I contact where to make these checks?’

‘I thought you had contact with the Canadian police?’

‘Hell, yes, of course. But I have to have some basis on which to work, you know, some reason for my enquiries. Like where he claims to be at university, where he did earlier research, all that stuff.’

She pondered and then brightened. ‘Some of it should be here in his files in Human Resources.’

‘Human … ?’ Gus shook his head irritably. ‘You mean what you and I used to call Personnel. OK, yeah. But in my experience they won’t part with staff members’ files unless you have a warrant. And I can’t get a warrant without due cause, can I? Is there any other way you can get a lead on this for me?’

She thought for a while and then said uneasily, ‘Well, I suppose I could pump him. Ask a lot of innocent questions and see what comes out of it.’

He frowned, clearly not liking the idea one bit. And then, suddenly, he laughed. ‘Dolly,’ he said suddenly. ‘You’re looking peaky.’

‘Eh?’ She was amazed. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You look tired,’ he translated. ‘Off your peak. Short of a vitamin or two. I think you need a nice night out, just as a pick-me-up. No, not alone with the Dishy One, but with a few buddies, people you can enjoy being with.’

‘Try being a little denser,’ she said acidly. ‘I want to go over to see how Jerry is and I really haven’t time for all this silliness.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said and beamed. ‘I’ll come over with you, A & E, is it? I’ll be glad to hear how the poor fella’s coping. And of course, good old Hattie’ll be there, won’t she? It’ll be nice to see Hatt. Haven’t seen her for an age. It’d be really good to have a chance to get my knees under her table again and my belly wrapped round one of her chicken pies. Best chicken pies in the world, hers.’

‘Gus,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ He laughed and got to his feet, holding out his hands to pull her up too. ‘Just you watch me. By the time I’ve finished with our Hatt, she’ll be convinced she had the idea of giving a party for a few mates all on her own. And what’s more she’ll include your pal with the buzzy name as though it was the most natural thing in the world!’

Quite how he would do it, she didn’t know, and she didn’t want to. Hattie was one of her best friends, and they were on very comfortable terms, but she would never have had the gall to ask her to give a dinner party in her own home in order to help with an investigation. Apart from anything else, Hattie would insist, and justifiably so, on George telling her all the whys and wherefores, who were the suspects and what the investigation was all about, and George knew perfectly well that she would find it very difficult to avoid doing so. Gus, on the other hand, would manage it easily because, as George knew all too well, he could be the most persuasive of people. And it was important that Hattie wasn’t told why, because, bless her, George thought, she had the most open and confiding of natures and would never be able to hide from anyone how she thought about them. The thought of Hattie watching Zack over her own dinner table for signs of wrongdoing was more than George could contemplate.