Midnight Murders (4 page)

‘Always supposing they aren't blinded before they get there.'

‘The company that installed them are experimenting with other colours, including mottled-green.'

Peter noticed how the strong white light drained what little colour there was in Tony Waters' face and white-blond hair, and he reflected that a mottled-green face might look even more bizarre.

* * *

‘Peter, and?' Bill greeted Peter as he and Tony strode over the lawn towards him.

‘Tony Waters, hospital administration,' Peter introduced his companion to his superior.

Bill extended his hand. ‘We need to set up a system for interviewing your staff and patients as soon as possible, particularly… ' Bill flicked through his notebook, ‘Vanessa Hedley, the patient who ordered the gardener's boy to dig here.'

‘I can organise a rota for you to interview the staff, but you'll have to consult Harry Goldman before you interview any of the patients. He's the chief psychiatrist. Patients' welfare is his responsibility.'

‘Where can I find him?' Bill asked.

‘At the moment, in court. He's giving evidence in a case involving one of our patients.'

‘Then we'll begin with the staff.' Bill saw Dan and Patrick's shadows moving behind the screens. ‘Peter, you and Michelle begin with the nursing staff working on Vanessa Hedley's ward. You've no objections Mr Waters?'

‘None, Inspector… '

‘Superintendent Mulcahy,' Bill corrected tersely.

Peter pulled his notebook from his pocket and strode across the lawn towards Michelle Grady. Dan and Patrick emerged from behind the screens. Patrick peeled a pair of rubber gloves from his hands, as he studied a sheaf of Polaroid photographs Dan held in front of him.

‘We're ready to move her out, Bill.' Dan turned to one of his subordinates. ‘Get this crowd shifted back, and the ambulance up.'

‘Right away, sir.' The young officer ran off.

‘Inspector Dan Evans, Patrick O'Kelly, pathologist, Tony Waters, hospital administration,' Bill made the introduction impatiently.

‘Perhaps you can help us, Tony,' Dan began.

‘I'd be delighted, but, as I've already explained to Superintendent Mulcahy, I can't authorise access to the patients. You'll have to wait for Mr Goldman's permission.'

Dan offered Tony a selection of the polaroids. ‘I realise this is a long shot, but do you recognise her?'

Waters accepted the photographs gingerly. He held the first one and squinted at it.

‘Blonde hair, blue eyes, five-foot six-inches tall, well nourished – you could say plump,' Patrick chipped in. ‘No distinguishing marks as yet, but I may uncover some in the lab. Early twenties. Strike a chord?'

‘We have over four hundred nurses here, between the day and night shifts, and that's without the auxiliaries, administrative and domestic staff. Not to mention the patients. But, I spend very little time out of my office. Could I make a suggestion?' Tony handed the photographs back.

‘You could,' Bill agreed.

‘Don't show these to the nursing staff, if there are patients around. Some of their minds are delicately balanced.'

‘We can agree to that. We'll also try to arrange a better photograph back in the lab.' Dan studied the picture of the contorted face. Patrick had scraped away the earth, but the features were smudged with dirt, and the skin was grey, disfigured by livid blotches.

‘We'll check her description with our missing person's files and put out an appeal to the media. Do you have any nurses or patients missing, Tony? Any who haven't turned up for work during the last couple of days?' Bill asked.

‘All our nurses are reliable. If they're sick for a day, they're meticulous about phoning in, because they're aware of the strain their absence will place on their colleagues. Patients,' Tony shook his head. ‘The voluntary patients come and go because whatever the doctors' diagnosis, we have no authority to keep them here. In any given week, at least half a dozen discharge themselves.'

‘And disappear?' Dan asked.

‘As far as our records go. Some don't even bother to go through the formal procedure of discharging themselves from the wards, and that's not to mention those in the halfway houses – '

‘What houses?' Dan interrupted.

‘We have three halfway houses,' the administrator explained. ‘Six-bedroomed units we use to accommodate and support patients the psychiatrists consider fit enough to be returned to the community. They're located just outside the walls, on the west side. Each patient has their own room, but they share kitchen and bathroom facilities. Some have been found sheltered job placements or training by their social workers.'

‘Is a check kept on their movements?' Bill asked.

‘There's a warden in each hostel, and staff sleep in on a rota basis, so we're aware if any patient stays out all night. They also have to keep an appointment with their own psychiatrist once a week.'

‘These hostels are outside the grounds?' Dan checked.

‘Yes.'

‘There's no way the people living in them could enter the hospital buildings at night?'

‘I suppose they could come through the main gate, if they wanted to,' Waters conceded.

Bill looked at Peter who'd seen Dan handling photographs of the victim and returned to get one.

‘You haven't heard the half of it, sir,' Peter took a Polaroid from Dan, Oblivious to Waters' angry glare, he summoned Michelle Grady and they walked back towards the wards.

Peter had worked on the Drug Squad for ten out of the fifteen years he'd spent on the force. Drug Squad work was dirty, occasionally dangerous, often boring, wet and cold; but he operated in familiar territory. Usually he had a reasonable idea of what he was up against, and what he was looking for. Most of the time, interviewing people was straight-forward. His questions were centred on what, when, how, and where they'd seen, sold or handled illegal substances.

A murder enquiry was entirely different. This wasn't the first time he'd been drafted into the Serious Crimes Squad, but prior knowledge of what was required of him didn't make the task any easier. He hated interviewing people when he didn't know what he was looking for. At best, all he could hope for was a few scraps of information that might prove useful. Scraps that wouldn't even be recognised as useful until they were pieced together back at the station, along with fragments of gossip that his fellow officers had picked up.

He sat on a hard wooden chair in Jean Marshall's office, and stirred a cup of mud-coloured hot water the duty domestic had assured him was coffee. Michelle sat across the desk from him, nervously crossing and uncrossing her legs. They weren't wonderful legs. Too thin for his taste, but she was another body; and he hoped her presence would protect him from Jean's more blatant overtures.

In the event he needn't have worried. When Jean arrived, she had Lyn Sullivan in tow, and both were carrying bottles of mineral water.

‘You are brave.' Lyn's smile lit up her face, and Peter found himself smiling back, in spite of the frustration welling inside him.

‘I didn't think it showed.'

‘Not many people will drink that.' She pointed at the coffee. ‘Heaven only knows what Josie puts into it. The latest theory includes powdered laxatives.'

‘Now you tell me.' He changed the subject. ‘Run the events of Sunday past me one more time.' he said to Jean.

‘You were there.' She lit a cigarette.

‘When exactly did Vanessa Hedley start talking about bodies buried in the garden?'

‘She told me about the body when I came on duty at eight on Sunday morning,' Lyn volunteered.

Peter glanced at the expanse of thigh displayed beneath Lyn's short skirt. He hadn't seen a pair of legs as good as hers in a long time.

‘Didn't you think to question the night staff about her story?' Michelle looked daggers at Peter.

‘None of the staff would consider a patient's ramblings worth discussing.' Jean blew smoke in Michelle's face. ‘This is a psychiatric hospital. Most of our patients, including Vanessa, have difficulty differentiating between reality and fantasy.'

‘Has she said anything since?' Michelle persevered.

‘Only as many variations as she can think of along the lines of “I told you so”,' Jean answered.

‘Do you think she really did see something?' Michelle asked.

‘It's bloody obvious she did,' Peter snarled. ‘She must have done, to be able to pinpoint the exact spot where the body was found.'

An uneasy silence fell over the room.

‘Sorry we can't be more help.' Jean poured water into a glass, ‘but you know what this place is like. Or you should do after the time you've spent visiting here. Trevor's a simple depressive, which is understandable considering the physical injuries he's had to cope with, but most of the other cases on his ward are more complicated. It's difficult for laymen to understand that paranoid delusions and fantasies are as real as these four walls to some of our inmates.'

‘I hear what you're saying.' Michelle's jargon irritated Peter. ‘Any one else reported odd happenings in the night lately?'

‘Lyn's the one who works two weeks on, two weeks off, on night shift. I'm days, regular.' Jean stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘If there's nothing more, I have to get back to the ward. You know where to find me if you want me.'

‘Patients are always imagining they've seen something at night. Only last week we had to physically restrain and sedate Vanessa to keep her from running outside,' Lyn Sullivan recalled. ‘She was convinced her lover was waiting for her in the grounds.'

‘Has she ever managed to get out?' Peter asked.

‘Not since I've been here. To be honest, at night she's usually too heavily sedated to move one foot in front of the other.'

‘We try to keep the more difficult ones under control,' Jean rose from her chair.

Michelle raised her eyebrows. ‘By knocking them out with a chemical cosh?'

‘By tranquillising them so they can't leave the safety of the ward and harm themselves,' Lyn corrected.

‘Was she tranquillised on Saturday night?' Peter pushed his coffee away in disgust.

‘I assume so. There's nothing in her notes to suggest the contrary.'

‘Then how do you explain her being up and awake in the small hours?'

‘Patients develop immunity to most drugs after they've been using them for a while,' Jean lectured.

‘Then you need to increase the dosage to gain the desired effect?' Peter asked.

‘Yes.'

‘And Vanessa hasn't had her dosage increased lately?'

‘Not according to her record card,' Jean said flatly.

‘We halved Mrs Hedley's medication last Saturday,' Lyn admitted in embarrassment. ‘The pharmacy was closed, and we'd run out of the sleeping pills she's written up for.'

‘Lucky for us that you did.' Peter had his first piece of concrete evidence; the reason for Vanessa's wakeful night. It wasn't much, but it was a beginning. And all investigations had to start somewhere.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I'm Harry Goldman. Inspector Evans, isn't it?'

Dan shook hands with the diminutive man. Dr Harry Goldman was the caricaturist's dream of a psychiatrist: just under five-feet tall, with a mop of unruly brown hair, weak eyes half hidden behind gold-rimmed glasses, he had a scrawny inadequate body that looked too fragile to support his oversized head.

‘I'm sorry I wasn't here this morning,' Goldman apologised. He looked across the gardens to the screened-off area of lawn. ‘I was in court. One of our patients has applied for access to his children.'

‘We need to question all of your patients and one in particular, as soon as possible,' Dan left no room for refusal.

‘Tony Waters met me in the car park. I have no objection to you questioning Vanessa Hedley, or any of our patients, as long as either I or one of my senior colleagues is present. But I must caution you to treat any information you gather circumspectly. Because of the nature of their illnesses, some of our patients will be unreliable witnesses.'

‘There're as many disturbed people wandering around outside this hospital as there are inside, Mr Goldman, and a fair proportion seem to find their way down to the station. Our officers are trained to interpret the information we glean. But we'd be grateful for assistance that you are prepared to give us.'

Goldman looked towards the screened-off area of the lawn. ‘Given the upset this has generated, and not only among the patients, we'll be happy to help in any way we can.'

‘The sooner we make a start, the better,' Dan said briskly.

‘Tony Waters also mentioned that you've requested a tour of the hospital. I'll take you round myself. I'd like to show you the areas you can have free access to, as opposed to the wards where the patients' welfare is paramount. There are also sections that you'll need to gain the permission of the staff before entering and others which are out-of-bounds for good reason. If you need to search them, it will have to be done under the staff's supervision.'

‘I appreciate your co-operation, Mr Goldman,' Dan replied blandly.

The doctor looked for sarcasm in Dan's voice and found none.

‘Shall we start by interviewing Vanessa?' Dan headed for the building, leaving Harry no choice but to follow.

They made a detour to pick up Peter from the room where he was interviewing staff with Michelle. Aware of Peter's reputation, both as a competent detective and one who didn't pay lip service to the rules, Dan asked him to sit in on his session with Vanessa as an observer. In the absence of any other senior officer, he had no choice but to use Peter as a deputy, but Dan wanted to make it clear from the outset that he was leading the investigation.

Rightly or wrongly, more than one officer at the station blamed Peter Collins for Trevor Joseph's injuries, and Dan was determined to ensure any notions Peter entertained of schoolboy heroics remained off his beat.

They went to Harry Goldman's office, a large, square room decorated in warm shades of yellow, its sofa and chairs upholstered in a restful shade of pale-green. Typical psychologist's decor, Dan reflected when Harry offered him the use of his desk and chair. Peter sat in the most unobtrusive corner of the room, behind the door. Harry picked up a stacking chair and sat down alongside Peter.

Vanessa Hedley was brought to the door in a wheelchair. She was escorted by Lyn and Harry's assistant Dotty Clyne, a large, fair-haired, masculine woman with a ginger moustache. Lyn helped Vanessa out of the chair and she tottered into the office leaning on Lyn's arm. She was dazed, disorientated, obviously heavily sedated and dressed in a blue floral outfit that would have looked more at home at a Buckingham Palace garden party.

‘Vanessa, you remember Peter Collins, don't you?' Lyn asked.

‘I do,' Vanessa snapped with surprising vehemence, considering her heavy eyes.

‘And here's Mr Goldman.' The young nurse guided her away from Peter towards the psychiatrist.

‘I'm Inspector Dan Evans.' Dan held out his hand in an attempt to break the ice, an attempt that backfired when he rose from his chair.

Vanessa shrank back and screamed. ‘It's him! The man I saw in the garden.'

‘This isn't the man you saw, Vanessa. This is a police officer,' Lyn contradicted.

‘Did he look like me, Vanessa?' Dan asked. ‘Was he my size?'

‘You're him.' Vanessa fought Lyn as the girl tried to prevent her leaving the room. ‘I know you're him.'

‘How do you know, Vanessa?' Dan asked, less urgently this time, in response to a warning look from Harry.

‘Because I know – because I do – '

One of the joys of being a copper in a smallish town is knowing the history of most of the characters the town had to offer. Dan had been in the station the night they'd arrested Vanessa. It had been eight or nine years ago, but he had known of her before then. Her husband had owned the biggest, plushest and most popular hotel on the seafront, and Vanessa had been the right person to help build up trade, with her attractive face, trim five-foot-two figure, designer clothes, and memory like a seasoned CID officer for guests' names, faces, likes and dislikes.

Suspecting that her husband was having an affair with one of the barmaids at the hotel, one night, Vanessa had followed him when he drove the staff home at the end of their shift. She'd tailed the hotel minibus in her Porsche, at a discreet distance, not that her husband had been looking for her. He'd been too busy dropping off all his staff – but one.

Vanessa had followed him and his remaining passenger to a car park on the cliff top, and waited; when her husband and the barmaid had finished and were about to turn back, Vanessa revved her engine and crashed her car into the minibus at full speed.

The first coppers on the scene almost cried. Some talked about nothing else for days. The spectacle of a two- month-old Porsche turned into a lump of written-off scrap metal was more than most grown men could bear. Miraculously, Vanessa walked away from the wreckage without a scratch. Her husband and his lover weren't so lucky. Neither had bothered to fasten their seatbelts, and the barmaid, who was fixing her lipstick at the time, in order to allay any suspicions her new husband might have about her late return, had been thrown through the windscreen of the minibus. To quote the duty sergeant who'd interviewed her in casualty, “her face had looked like a jigsawed Picasso”. When Dan saw her a couple of months later in court, her scars hadn't healed well.

Vanessa's husband still ran the hotel – from a wheelchair. And it hadn't been just his legs that had gone. Vanessa had laughed so much when the court had been told the full extent of his injuries, she'd had to be tranquillised.

‘You're him!' Vanessa's screech brought Dan Evans sharply back into the present. She looked from Dan to Lyn to the two men sitting behind the door. Realising she had an audience, she played the scene for all it was worth. ‘You didn't believe me,' she screamed at Peter. ‘You patronised me.' She tossed her head. ‘Not one of you,' her gaze lingered on Lyn, ‘has ever been interested in anything I had to say. And it was all true.' Her voice dropped. ‘Every word, and now you know it's true, you want to talk to me. Well I don't want to talk to you. Not after the way you treated me.'

‘I can understand that, Vanessa.' Peter's tone was muted, apologetic.

Dan stared at him, dumbfounded. He'd never heard Peter speak softly before.

‘I know what I saw.' Vanessa repeated. ‘You buried her. You – ' she pointed at Dan.

‘Not Inspector Evans, Vanessa, but someone who looked like him,' Peter broke in. ‘And we know about it because, thanks to you, we found her. You were right, and we were wrong. But she's found now, and we'd like you to tell us what you saw. Will you, please?'

‘He buried her right there. Right in the middle… ' she began to repeat what she'd said before, then, without warning, she said something that galvanised Peter and Dan's attention. ‘It wasn't like last time.'

‘What last time?' They asked the question in unison.

‘The last time he buried one.'

‘Where, Vanessa? Where did he bury another one?' Peter asked.

‘Not telling you.' She clammed her lips shut, and turned her back on him.

Harry shook his head in warning when Dan moved to rise from his chair.

‘Vanessa?' Peter left his chair and offered it to her. ‘Won't you sit down?'

‘No.'

‘Please, take my chair.'

She hesitated for what seemed like hours, before finally sitting down. Harry eased himself out of his seat. Peter took it and faced Vanessa.

‘Vanessa, you told me that I didn't care enough to give the body in the garden a decent burial. I promise you, I do care. And I care about the other one as well. Won't you tell us where we can find it, so we can bury that one too?'

‘It's in the garden.'

‘It's a big garden, Vanessa.'

She whirled around and pointed at Dan. ‘He knows. He buried them. Ask him.'

Peter reined in his irritation. ‘Vanessa, that's Inspector Evans. He's a police officer.'

‘He did it. And I'm not going to tell you any more.' Vanessa turned her face to the wall.

Harry touched Peter's shoulder and shook his head.

Peter left his chair. ‘I'm going now, Vanessa.' He stood in front of her, but she refused to look at him. ‘I'll come back and see you later.'

‘Sergeant Collins is going now, Vanessa, but you can stay and have a chat with me, if you like,' Harry suggested. ‘Shall I send for tea and biscuits?'

‘I'm tired.' She closed her eyes.

‘Later perhaps?'

‘I want to go to bed.'

Lyn nodded to the porter, who wheeled the chair forward.

Dan followed Peter out of the door. ‘Ring the Station and tell them to call out the helicopter and heat-seeking cameras. I want every inch of the grounds photographed,' Dan ordered as soon as they were out of earshot of Harry's office. He fell silent as the porter pushed Vanessa's wheelchair up the corridor.

Harry joined them. ‘You can't believe what Vanessa said about a second body being buried in the garden. She's had so much attention lavished on her since this morning I suspect she's simply seeking more. You wouldn't be doing her any favours by paying credence to anything she said.'

‘The problem is, Mr Goldman,' Dan turned to Harry, ‘after what we uncovered following her last bout of attention seeking, we dare not ignore any information she volunteers. I'm afraid the risk of not “doing her any favours” is one we have to take.'

Trevor stood poised in the doorway that separated the familiar, secure world of his ward from the frightening, unknown world of the outside. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and put one foot on the doorstep. Leaning on his stick he dragged his other foot forward. Stepping down on to the path, he opened his eyes again.

He swayed, overwhelmed by the noise and people rushing around. He shrank back, afraid they were on a collision course with him, although the nearest person was over ten yards away. Fighting nausea, he struggled to take another step, sideways this time, so he could remain close to the building. An officer ran past from behind, so close, Trevor could smell the sweat from his serge uniform. A group of patients walked towards him, heading for the screened-off area on the lawn. Panic stricken, he froze.

He felt as though he were surrounded by uniformed police and people in white coats – although there were less than a dozen within sight. He heard a screech and turned. Alison Bevan was leaning out of a window in the therapy block, laughing at a porter who'd dropped a sandwich into a flowerbed.

He took another breath, and turned away from the police activity to the rest of the garden. But the normally tranquil grounds were full of lines of officers, beating the bushes and combing the lawns. The drive was strewn with police cars, ambulances, and the overflow from the car parks which were jam-packed with television journalists' and reporters' cars.

Reaching blindly, he groped for the door-handle behind him; as soon his hand closed over it, he turned on his heel, swung his stick, and in his eagerness to return to the cocooned security of the ward, slammed the length of his body painfully against the edge of the door.

Bile rose into his mouth as he fought to push the door open. But all he succeeded in doing was thumping the full weight of the metal-framed UVPC door in his face; hitting the bridge of his nose, and almost knocking himself out. He reeled backwards, dropping his stick and falling to his knees, but still retaining his grip on the door-handle.

‘Trying to get in, Trevor? Let me help you.' Spencer Jordan's strong hands closed over his elbows. Easing Trevor to his feet, he opened the door, and helped him in. ‘Your stick.' Spencer retrieved it and handed it to him. ‘First time is always a bitch,' he lapsed into American jargon. ‘I remember it well.'

Trevor only just made it to his room in time to vomit the goat's cheese sandwich into the toilet bowl of his private bathroom. Spencer held his head and sponged his face with cold water. Used to nurses ministering to his needs, Trevor saw nothing odd in Spencer's actions. When he finished retching, Spencer helped him back into his room and steered him into a chair.

‘As I was saying, the first time out is a bitch.' Spencer smiled. ‘But you did it. And on your own.'

‘I turned and ran,' Trevor muttered, shame-faced.

‘You wouldn't have if there had been fewer people around.' Spencer pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Smoke?'

‘I don't.'

‘Neither do I.' Spencer returned them to his pocket. ‘I keep them for patients who do.' He fingered the packet. ‘Sometimes I wish I did. It gives you something to do with your hands.'

Trevor managed a small smile.