A Bleeding of Innocents (11 page)

Liz declined to answer. ‘But he did make the offer.'

‘A couple of months ago. It wasn't a take it or leave it thing. Joe said if ever I fancied working for myself we could work something out. He didn't expect an answer there and then. We didn't even talk about money. I said I'd give it some thought, talk to Kerry about it, and he said no rush but when the time came for him to retire he'd like to leave the business in good hands. That was all. There was no question of having to lay my hands on big money at short notice.'

‘Did you talk to Kerry about it?'

‘I never got round to it. I didn't want to disappoint her if it didn't come to anything. I wanted to be sure Joe meant it. I wanted to be sure it was what I wanted, that I wasn't making a commitment I'd regret later. And I wanted to be sure we could—' He stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Liz finished it for him. ‘That you could afford it. What about all this surplus money that was going into insurance policies you didn't need?'

A spark of temper kindled in his eye. ‘Fifty quid a month is one thing. Twenty thousand pounds down is something else. It was a big step. I had to be sure it was what I wanted.'

‘Have you decided yet?'

‘No, I haven't,' he snarled. ‘All at once it doesn't seem very important.'

Liz nodded mechanically, giving nothing away, wondering if it was time to hit him with the other thing. The prospect gave her no pleasure but the results might be revealing. She said, ‘Did you know your wife was seeing another man?'

She thought he might leap to his feet, hurling denials and abuse. She was ready to defend herself if he hurled more than words. She knew she had stripped away so many of his skins that he must be close to losing control. Whether he was a cornered killer or a young man driven to the edge of reason by the events that had overtaken him, she had to be ready for violence.

Instead he began to cry. His shoulders slumped, his slim hands slipped from the arms of the chair into his lap and great tears began to roll down his cheeks. His lips trembled like a child's. ‘That isn't true. It isn't true.'

‘It is true,' said Liz. ‘She went to a restaurant with him only a month ago. Before that he'd called at the flat.'

‘No. No.'

‘When you weren't there,' she added unnecessarily. Perhaps all of this was unnecessary. If he was guilty he was a hell of an actor; if he was innocent she was putting his heart through the wringer.

‘Who?' His voice was a mere breathy ghost.

‘A doctor.'

‘She was seeing a doctor?' A note of hope elevated the last word. ‘Someone she knew, someone she worked with. A friend, that's all.'

‘Wouldn't she have told you?'

His face fell again. ‘Yes,' he admitted softly.

The time was coming, Liz was aware, that she was going to have to come down off the fence and decide – innocent or guilty. Did she believe him? The evidence against him was circumstantial but couldn't be ignored. He had insured Kerry's life. He'd been offered a partnership in a business he loved when he had the money to buy in. If he learned that Kerry was having an affair, in a fury of cold rage because he'd loved her and she'd betrayed him, could he have decided to realize his investment in her and put it into something more reliable – the planes he'd hungered after since he was eleven years old?

He might look like a broken child but he was a grown man with a man's passions. If Kerry hurt him enough he was capable of exacting revenge. But would he have done? Everyone who knew them said they were in love. If he'd found her with her doctor friend he might have brained her with the iron. But was he a man who'd resort to careful, clever, cold-blooded murder? She hoped she wasn't being swayed by his tears, but Liz was about ready to wager that he was not.

She began to say, ‘Mr Page, you must see how it looks—' Then there was a sharp rap at the door of the interview room and Shapiro's head appeared briefly, beckoning her with a terse nod. She announced her departure to the recording equipment and went outside with him.

‘What is it?'

Shapiro indicated the door. ‘How long's he been here?'

Liz checked her watch. ‘Something over an hour. I can get you the exact time.'

He shook his head. ‘An hour's more than enough. There's been another murder. Another nurse, another shot-gun. David Page didn't kill his wife and it doesn't look as if Jack Carney did it either. It's just turned into a serial killing. That means we're looking for someone with no motive outside his own mind.'

The killing took place outside the nurses'home adjacent to Castle General, in broad daylight, with passers-by twenty yards away and probably thirty people close enough to have seen something. And none of them had seen anything.

Or rather, they had all seen the same thing: a woman in a lime-green track-suit jog across the park then ease back to a walk as she reached the pavement. She traded a word with two young men who were just entering the park. Someone else saw her look at her watch and shove an unruly mass of dark red hair back into the knot it was escaping from. Then it seemed everyone lost interest in her and got on with their own pursuits – playing with dogs, exercising children, feeding ducks, sailing model yachts – until the sound of the gunshot brought them snapping round like soldiers called to attention.

If Maggie Board had been less profoundly injured she might have survived. Not only because the hospital was just a hundred yards from where she was shot but because a good half of those enjoying the autumn sunshine in the park that Monday lunchtime were doctors or nurses. They didn't freeze at the sight of blood. They ran to her, crouched over her, hunted for vital signs, hunted for bleeding points in the welter of chewed-up flesh. One of the joggers sprinted for the casualty entrance.

But in the event nothing they could do would have saved her. The blast from the shot-gun hit her in the chest and throat and if she wasn't dead when she hit the pavement she was already beyond saving. It would have been better if fewer of the on-lookers had been experts and more had been helpless bystanders. For while everyone in the immediate area was trying to render medical assistance no one was looking to see who left the scene in a hurry with a whisp of smoke curling from under his raincoat.

Liz had spoken to a dozen people before somebody mentioned the yellow car, and he wasn't sure if it had anything to do with the shooting. But it was parked close to where Mrs Board was shot, and it seemed odd that it should drive away while people were on their hands and knees round the woman on the ground, trying to drag her back from the abyss although in reality she had already fallen.

‘What sort of a car was it?'

The witness was an elderly man who had been walking his elderly dog as far as the duck-pond. Neither of them was up to running when the shot was fired so they watched while others acted. The man didn't have his glasses on: all he could say of the car was that it was yellow, and he didn't see the driver. If the dog saw anything more it wasn't talking.

The other thing which they learned, which served to confuse the issue more than it illuminated it, was that Maggie Board wasn't a nurse. She had a room in the nurses' home, she worked in the hospital, but she wasn't a nurse. She was a surgeon.

‘What do you make of that?' asked Shapiro.

The neat division of effort which Liz's arrival had made possible, which had come under stress almost immediately with the murder of Kerry Page, had now collapsed entirely. The only way Castlemere police could get through at all was for everyone – CID, uniform, Traffic Branch, and dog handlers – to turn their hands to whatever needed doing most urgently. Liz had not needed to tell Shapiro this: he had gone with her to the scene of the latest outrage as soon as she'd sent David Page home.

The only one missing was Donovan. Liz thought privately they'd manage well enough without him but Shapiro was disappointed. ‘I thought he'd have been here. He knows the state we're in. He could have offered to help.'

‘Make of what?' Her head was spinning. She knew from experience that when there had been time to reduce the information they had into a series of reports she would be able to pick up the threads and get a cohesive picture of events and chronology. But just now it was like swimming in a kaleidoscope, words and images exploding at her from all directions. She was sure she should know what Shapiro was talking about but she didn't.

‘Maggie Board wasn't a nurse,' he explained patiently. ‘She lived in the nurses'home – she'd taken a spare room while contractors were dealing with damp at her house, apparently. And off duty she looked rather like a nurse – you don't see many women of her age out jogging in fluorescent track-suits. She could easily have been taken for a nurse, particularly if you weren't talking to her. But she wasn't. She was a surgeon.'

‘Yes,' said Liz. ‘Er – so?'

‘So,' he went on, still patiently, ‘did the killer think she was a nurse or did he know who she was? Did he make a mistake or does he hate all medical personnel equally?'

Liz was sure that it mattered but just for the moment she couldn't quite see how.

Shapiro peered into her face with puzzlement turning to concern. ‘Good grief, girl, you're wrecked! Did you get any sleep last night?'

She sighed. ‘Not much, no. I'm sorry, Frank, I'll try and get my act together.'

He sniffed mournfully. ‘I wish I could afford to send you home. But I can't. Even the walking dead are indispensable just now. But listen, get back to the station, wash your face, get some coffee, and put your feet up for ten minutes. Then you might be some use to me.'

She raised a hand helplessly. ‘I can't leave—'

‘Do as you're told,' he said firmly. ‘We're just about finished here anyway. I'll talk to a couple of people at the hospital, then I'll be back there myself. You can run a murder enquiry from a pavement for just so long.'

She accepted the wisdom of what he was saying, still felt she was letting him down. ‘Yes, all right. The coffee: I think maybe I'll buy a fresh jar on my way in. A big jar.'

The police station was almost empty. The desk sergeant, the RT operator, a couple of constables to deal with anyone who couldn't resist having an accident while their colleagues were interviewing people who had seen nothing outside the nurses'home, that was about it. When Liz went upstairs to the CID offices it was like being on the
Flying Dutchman.

She put the kettle on – Shapiro's secretary was helping to man the switchboard – kicked her shoes off, dropped her forehead on her arms on the desk and shut her eyes for a moment.

Five minutes later she woke with a start, roused not by a sound but by a smell – the aroma of strong coffee. She blinked round her, looking for an explanation. When she found it she didn't know whether to be glad or sorry. ‘What are you doing here?'

Donovan had his back to her and for a moment he didn't answer. He was pouring boiling water carefully into a mug. Then he put the kettle down and picked up the mug with the same hand. When he passed it to her she saw why. His other hand was in plaster from the knuckles to half-way up his arm. His face looked as if he'd lost an argument with a lamppost.

His voice was low and his eyes avoided hers. ‘I heard about the incident at the hospital, wondered if I could help.'

‘You, Sergeant?' Liz asked testily. ‘I thought you'd resigned.'

His head jerked but he didn't look up. ‘That was – stupid. Petty. I wouldn't have done it to Alan Clarke and I'd no business doing it to you.' He gave a little lop-sided shrug. ‘It's up to you. I gave you my card, keep it if you want.' His eyes travelled slowly up to meet hers. He looked as weary as she felt. ‘But if you want to get the work out of me before I go, maybe I can be some use. I can man the phones. I can take statements, there's nothing wrong with my right hand …' He ran out of things to say and fell silent.

He handed her the coffee a little as if it were an olive branch. She sipped it speculatively. ‘What happened to you?'

‘I got mugged.' He risked a fractional grin. ‘In a graveyard.' He told her how he'd spent his day.

‘Carney's doing?'

‘Probably McMeekin's.'

‘What do you want to do about it?'

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. I asked for it and I got it. His time'll come. There's more important things to do first.'

Liz thought a moment longer before answering. ‘Donovan, get yourself a coffee, sit down, and listen to what I have to say. And listen good because I won't say it again. I'm tired of you behaving like Tintin the bloody Boy Detective. God knows I need all the help I can get on this investigation, but if I have to wonder whether you're assisting in the same enquiry or pursuing some vendetta of your own I'd just as soon you stayed at home.'

‘I'm sorry,' he muttered. ‘I—'

‘I haven't finished yet,' Liz interrupted fiercely. ‘It's this simple, Sergeant. I need to be able to rely on my officers. I expect their loyalty. You took advantage of the fact that I'm new here and don't know all the background, and you used me to have a go at Carney even though you knew we were putting an important investigation at risk. I won't tolerate that kind of irresponsibility. I've no room on my team for a prima donna.

‘Maybe Alan Clarke allowed you a certain leeway. I know Mr Shapiro thinks you're a good copper. But, Sergeant, your problem is that Alan is dead and you answer to me, not Mr Shapiro. I can use your help, but if you're going to work for me you have to work with me. I'm not going to let you get on with it and rubber-stamp the results, however sure you are that you're in the right. I don't work that way. Unless you're prepared to fit in with me you'd better take a long leave, starting now.'