George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (36 page)

‘So tell me! What is this SDAW Club?’

‘I still don’t know what the letters mean precisely,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you this much. It’s just a group of friends.’

‘A group of —?’

‘Friends. Well, she admitted they were accidental friends.’

She shook her head at him in exasperation. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘She was cagey, the lady on the other end of the phone. But I think I might have worked it out. Or be on the way to working it out. She admitted that it was a club of people who had all been ill together. In St Dymphna’s hospital’

‘St Dymphna’s?’ That was an old hospital not too far away from Old East which dealt mainly with the handicapped and
the pyschiatrically ill. It was the centre for the local Community Initiative for the mentally ill and as such highly unpopular with the local people, who blamed the hospital for every wino, mugger and beggar in the local streets. The fact that there were no more than there always had been in Shad-well for the past half-dozen centuries escaped the complainers; they preferred to hate St Dymphna’s. ‘What on earth,’ she said, ‘would a person like Tony Mendez be doing belonging to a group of… Oh!’

‘Precisely! People who have been ill together, she said. Not a real club, just a group of mutually supportive friends. That was all.’

‘So, Mendez had some sort of psychiatric illness —’ George said. ‘In the new thinking, that is. In the past, he’d have been considered weak and in need of AA —’

‘But nowadays you send drunks to a psychiatric unit. That’s what happened to Mendez. And when he got better he joined the club.’

‘Is that what the S and the D part is? St Dymphna’s?’

‘I imagine so. She didn’t say, so we don’t know what AW means. But it is a club. The idea was, the woman told me, that they could help each other through crises.’

‘Hmm,’ George said. ‘Pity he didn’t call her that morning before he took his vodka.’

‘Indeed. And also, why was he using vodka regularly at all? He clearly was.’ He looked happy suddenly. ‘This is getting exciting. To find out more about Mendez and what happened to him we’ll need to go along to St Dymphna’s and make a few enquiries, won’t we? It’s getting more and more tangled. Just the sort of case I like best.’

They went to St Dymphna’s together. There was no way she would be deflected. The fact that she had work to do in her own department, that properly speaking it was not normal practice for a police pathologist to accompany investigating officers on their enquiries, that Gus would have preferred to get the visit over and done with on his own: none of these counted. George was going with him and that was an end of it. He gave up arguing very early on.

‘It feels odd coming here again,’ she said as the wheels of his old car squealed on the newly tiled driveway that led up to the front of the Victorian building, a ten-minute drive from Old East. ‘It’s looking a bit glitzy, isn’t it? Lots of new paint and a new drive. It must have cost a fortune. I wonder where they get their extra money from? Surely not the NHS. If they do, though, we could do with some of it at Old East.’

‘Monty Ledbetter gave them a big gift,’ Gus said in a flat colourless tone as he switched off the engine. ‘After Maureen died.’

‘Oh.’ She sat silently staring out at the bright flower-beds that adorned the sides of the pathway. She had got to know Monty and Maureen Ledbetter a little too well during their last big case, when Gus had had so many problems and she had to deal with them almost single-handed. It had been a
difficult time; and now Gus leaned over and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m glad you’ve come with me on this one, George,’ he said quietly, ‘No matter what I said before we started.’

She grinned at him sideways, a crooked sort of grin that had some irony in it. ‘Thanks sweetheart. Remind me to write to Monty when we get home. I wrote after Maureen died, but —’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s always harder to help when it’s a suicide. Well, that’s the way it goes, I suppose. Come on. We’ve got work to do.’ He got out of the car. ‘Hagerty should be here in a minute. I told him to use his own transport; I have to go up to the Yard right after this. Got a meeting.’

‘No!’ she said with her eyes wide. ‘How novel!’ He made a face at her and, as they walked up to the front door of the hospital, pinched her bottom so hard that she squealed. It felt good to be with him; there was a closeness that wrapped them today that filled her with good humour. Even investigating death was fun when she did it with Gus.

Hagerty had already arrived and was sitting in the hallway under the white marble statue of a long-dead Victorian benefactor of the hospital, staring gloomily at the vast brass plaque which bore the names of other citizens who had given the hospital money.

‘Morning, Guv.’ He got lugubriously to his feet. ‘I was just thinking, pity we don’t run hospitals the way they used to, with people giving money out of the goodness of their hearts instead of us having to nag the bloody Government all the time to look after the NHS. Oh, sorry, doc. No criticism of you or Old East meant, of course.’

‘What do you mean, of course?’ she said. ‘Of course you
were
criticizing us, and you’ve got a point. Old East is cruddy, falling down around our ears. Not like this, all shiny and well polished.’ She looked around at the thickly beeswaxed parquet floor and fresh paint. ‘But it’s what we do in the old buildings that matters most, not what they look like. And I can tell you, buster, from bitter American experience, it’s better
to be sick in the UK than the US. Disease doesn’t put you on the breadline here the way it does some people at home.’

‘This is a hell of a time to talk health politics,’ Gus said plaintively. ‘Ain’t I ever to get peace from you both? Come on, let’s sort ourselves out.’

A large man in a porter’s uniform, well supplied with bright brass buttons, was sitting in a sort of cubby hole by the main entrance, contemplating them with a severe look. Gus arranged his face into one of its most agreeable expressions and quirked his head at him.

‘Good morning, squire. And a very nice one too, ’n’t it?’

The porter, clearly mollified by Gus’s familiar accent, bent his head forwards in a lordly acknowledgement. ‘Very nice, sir. Now, can I be of help to you, gentlemen? Madam?’

‘I was just wondering,’ Gus said, standing with his hands in his trouser pockets so that the skirts of his light raincoat —which he had insisted on wearing in spite of the continuing blazing hot weather — bunched out behind him. ‘I got this mate, told me about a club they’ve got here. Um, the SDAW Club.’

The porter looked at him and then slowly opened his mouth. There was a glint of silver tooth and then a faint rumble from deep inside him. He was chuckling. ‘Did he indeed? You got some interesting mates, then, mister. If he’s a member, that is, this friend of yours.’

‘I got the impression he was,’ Gus said, jovial now as he leaned confidingly against the side of the little cubby hole. DC Hagerty hovered behind him and George stood a little back, just watching. Gus in action was always a delight to see.

‘Well, now, was he suggesting you ought to be a member ’n’ all?’ the porter asked, his grin now much more pronounced. He was clearly enjoying this conversation.

‘Funny you should say that,’ Gus said admiringly. ‘How could you know? He did say as much. Now, why would that be?’

The porter let the chuckle become a throaty laugh. ‘On
account of maybe you’re a bit too fond of the sauce, mister. Mind you, I’m not sayin’ that, I’m just saying that maybe your friend is suggestin’ that. Yes, bit too fond of the old sauce.’

Gus managed to look peeved. ‘Well, really, I don’t see as how that’s anyone’s business but mine. I like a drink as much as the next man, and I don’t deny I’ve had my noisy days, know what I mean? But to suggest I’m
too
fond, that really is a bit much, don’t you reckon?’

‘Not for me to say, mister. You asked me about the SDAW Club, and I’m just tellin’ you what I know of it. Which is not for public consumption, you understand.’ He laughed again. ‘Quite the reverse, in fact’

‘Hmm.’ Gus leaned a little closer. ‘Well, I made a deal with him that I’d come here and ask about this here club. He says I could do it a bit o’ good, seein’ I’ve got some funds at my disposal for givin’ away — being involved in charity work as I am from time to time. So I’d better do it. Can I talk to whoever runs this club then?’

The porter stopped laughing and looked watchful. ‘Didn’t your friend explain it to you?’

‘Not what you might call explain,’ Gus said. ‘He just said to come along and sort it all out.’

The porter sniffed sumptuously and at last got to his feet and emerged ponderously from his cubby hole. ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘I think this has gone far enough. It’s been a nice joke, but it’s far enough.’

‘Joke?’ Gus looked scandalized. ‘What do you mean, joke?’

‘Didn’t you never get sent for a long stand when you was in the army, mate? I imagine you was at some time, you look old enough to have done your national service.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Gus bitterly, who was not, and looking for the first time genuinely put out.

‘Well, when you was a junior at whatever job it is you do then. You send the lads to someone for a long stand and when they’ve been kept hanging around half an hour or so, the one they’re sent to says, ‘You tell your boss you’ve had a long
enough stand for anyone, and get back to work.’ Well that’s ’ow it is now. The joke’s gone on long enough, and anyway’ — he made an effort to look menacing — ‘it’s not right to mock the afflicted, and while a joke’s a joke, it’s over now. On your way, friend.’

Gus looked at him for a long moment and then shook his head. ‘Well,’ he said conversationally. ‘I tried to do it the nice way.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out his warrant card. ‘Superintendent Hathaway, Ratcliffe Street. This is DC Hagerty and Dr Barnabas, police pathologist. We’d like to see whover looks after this club we’ve been talking about, if you please. And sharpish.’

The porter looked at the warrant card, then at Gus’s face, and then at Hagerty, who was also displaying his card. He blinked, opened his mouth and closed it again.

‘As soon as you like, squire,’ Gus said pleasantly, but with an edge to his voice. ‘Haven’t got all day, you know’

‘But there ain’t no club,’ the porter said. ‘Don’t you understand? You’ve bin sent on a wild goose wotsit. There ain’t no club. Only the ward.’

‘Try again,’ Gus invited. ‘Make me understand.’ He put away his card, but there remained an undertone of steel in his voice. ‘Fast.’

‘It’s the addiction ward ’ere.’ George bit her lip. AW. Addiction Ward. How stupid they had been not to see something so very obvious. Too obvious perhaps. The porter was still talking. ‘It’s where the boozers go to get dried out. Everyone knows that. We’ve ’ad some well-known people up there, very well known. But they don’t like outsiders knowing where they are, do they? So they gets their letters and that addressed to SDAW and then we know where to send stuff, but people outside don’t know they’re in a dry-out place. There ain’t no club as such, though I believe the patients get very matey up there. So when some geezer comes in ’ere asking for the SDAW Club, o’ course I see at once ’e’s bin set up by a mate. Stands to reason.’

Gus shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Not what I’d call reason, but I see what you mean. So, now, who do I talk to? Who will know about this club business?’

‘I keep telling you there ain’t no —’ the porter wailed.

‘Who do I talk to on this addiction ward then?’ Gus said sharply and the porter gave in.

‘Miss Chambers,’ he said sulkily. ‘If she’s there and o’ course I don’t know that, do I?’

‘Then find out,’ Gus snapped, pointing at the phone in the cubby hole. The porter sniffed with all the modest delicacy of an adenoidal elephant and, moving much like one too, turned and went back into the cubby hole and picked up the receiver.

It took some time and considerable forcefulness on Gus’s part to enable him to get across to whoever it was he spoke to on the telephone that this particular enquirer was not going to go away, and at length the porter cradled the phone and pointed across the hallway to the flight of handsome curving stairs.

‘The ward’s on the third floor,’ he said. ‘And,’ he added spitefully, ‘the lift’s not available to visitors, only patients.’

‘No problem,’ Gus said sunnily. ‘We enjoy the exercise. Thanks for your help, squire.’ And he was off, taking the stairs two at a time, with the others hurrying behind him.

The third floor was as well polished and handsome as the hall-way had been, and the two intervening floors too, and they stopped for a moment when they reached it, panting slightly and looking around.

A long corridor stretched away ahead of them, with doors on each side of it. Gus led the way along it, peering in at open doors as he reached them. They led to three-and four-bedded rooms for the most part, all of them with neatly made-up beds which were empty of people, though the oddments, cards and other litter lying around made it clear they were not unoccupied. Almost at the far end there was a closed door and Gus stopped outside it and listened. There
was a faint buzz of voices, and after a slight hesitation he reached for the doorknob.

The voice that stopped him seemed to come immediately into George’s ear, and she jumped in surprise even more than Gus did.

‘Whatever you do, don’t interrupt them,’ the woman who had appeared behind George said. She sounded alarmed. ‘It takes long enough to get them started without you spoiling things. Now, I’m Sonia Chambers. You wanted to see me, I understand. Which one is Superintendent Hathaway?’ And she looked from one to the other accusingly.

She was a bulky woman, tall and well muscled, with rather faded red hair arranged in elaborate curls and waves and an impeccably made-up face. She seemed to be wearing a well-cut skirt and silk shirt under her white coat, which was short enough to show a considerable expanse of black stockinged legs. About fifty, George thought, pretending she’s still in her flighty thirties.

‘Good morning,’ Gus said smoothly. ‘I’m Superintendent Hathaway. This is DC Hagerty.’ There was more flashing of cards. ‘I’d appreciate a few words.’