Mrs Crackenfield invited them both to sit down, but she didn’t offer them anything to drink.
‘We came,’ said Caroline after checking that Femur didn’t want to begin, ‘to ask you about Malcolm Chaze.’
Mrs Crackenfield raised a trembling hand to her forehead. ‘Poor man. It was dreadful, wasn’t it?’
‘You did know him then?’
She shrugged her slender shoulders, making the linen jacket bunch up around her ears. There were tiny pearls in the large lobes, looking incongruous and out of place.
‘Not nowadays. He’d become so awfully important. But I remember him well enough as a schoolboy.’
‘We understand that he had a relationship with your daughter.’
Mrs Crackenfield looked puzzled. ‘Only a trivial boy-and-girl affair.’ She shook her head, frowning. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Sergeant Lyalt, not an affair in the current sense of the word. They were seventeen or eighteen. It was one Christmas holiday, they’d go to the cinema together or to dances held by some of our friends. Malcolm didn’t know many people – our sort of people – so it was nice for him, and Georgie was glad enough of a guaranteed partner. She was at the age and stage when the idea of dances was rather
daunting. She wasn’t as pretty then as she became later. Even a little dumpy.’
‘What made them break up?’
‘I have no idea.’ She sounded impatient. ‘Heavens above, it’s decades ago. You can’t seriously believe that my daughter’s friendship with Malcolm Chaze has anything to do with his death?’
The sight of Cally’s face, beady and obstinate, made Femur decide it was time to take a hand. ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Crackenfield, that with this kind of case we have to look into every possible aspect of the victim’s life. It is a bore for people like you, but we need any information we can get about the man and, of course, any connections he may ever have had with the sort of people who might have wanted him shot.’
She flinched. He wasn’t surprised. Violent death didn’t fit anywhere in this old-fashioned, gentle, lavender-scented room. He saw that her face must once have been lovely, fine-boned and very elegant, before the whites of her eyes had faded and the wrinkles in her skin had made it look like crepe paper.
‘I can assure you, Chief Inspector Femur, that my daughter does not move in contract-killing circles at all.’
‘No, I’m sure that’s right. Where does she live now?’
‘In Scotland. She’s married.’ Mrs Crackenfield seemed to find Femur’s emollient voice easier to deal with than Caroline’s uncharacteristic abrasiveness. ‘She’s been married for twenty-five years to a delightful farmer up there. They have five children, and she hardly ever comes south.’ Her soft, wrinkled face twisted. ‘Unfortunately for me and my husband.’
‘I see. Could you give me her address?’
‘I don’t think …’
‘It’s all a question of eliminating people from our inquiries. As you can imagine, they have been extensive already and
because we’ve got nowhere we have to look further and further back in his life for an explanation.’
‘If you’re looking to people who have not seen him for as long as Georgina, you must be desperate,’ she said, with a little more energy warming her voice.
‘The address?’ said Caroline.
With obvious reluctance, Mrs Crackenfield dictated it.
‘And you really never saw him yourself?’ said Caroline, in the tones of prosecuting counsel asking the defendant whether he really expected the jury to believe a transparent tissue of lies. ‘That seems odd, when you live so close.’
A faint flush seeped along Mrs Crackenfield’s cheekbones. ‘Naturally we saw him once he’d moved in round the corner: in the street, on television, occasionally even at neighbours’ Christmas drinks parties. But we rarely spoke. It would have been rather undignified to try to make some kind of friendship with him now, simply because he used to come to our house as a schoolboy, don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps.’ Caroline looked at Femur, eyebrows raised to find out if he wanted to ask anything more. He shook his head slightly. She stood up. ‘Thank you for seeing us, Mrs Crackenfield. If anything occurs to you that might be helpful to our inquiries, will you let us know?’ Caroline handed over a card. ‘This gives you my mobile number, and I’ve written down the number of the incident room, here.’
‘I see. Thank you.’
‘And I would just like to say, once again, how sorry I am about your son’s death. It must have been hard for you to deal with – in the circumstances.’
Suddenly Mrs Crackenfield looked as though she’d been stabbed and the life was leaching out of her. Femur, who’d had plenty of recent experience of feeling half dead with misery, saw that she wasn’t going to be able to say anything. He thanked her again briefly and hustled Caroline out.
‘That was a bit tactless, Cally,’ he said, once they’d reached the street. ‘Not like you.’
‘I wanted to see how she’d react.’ She sounded much harder than usual and he stared at her. ‘There’s something odd going on there.’
Femur had always respected her judgement, but this surprised him. ‘She was perfectly frank, just didn’t want us bothering her daughter. I’d have thought most mothers in her position would have been the same.’
‘She was too tense for it to be just that, Guv. Couldn’t you feel it? And didn’t you look at her hands? They were clutching each other the whole time we were there. She’s frightened of something.’
‘Her son’s just died in squalor. Wouldn’t that make anyone tense?’
‘Not as much as that. I think I might phone the daughter when we get back.’
‘I’m surprised you’re not planning to fly straight up there,’ Femur said, with unusual sarcasm.
Playing phone tag had never done much for Trish’s temper and she was beginning to wish she had never involved Dr Bridge in her work for Anna. When he hadn’t been incarcerated with patients, Trish had been in court, and vice versa.
She was sluicing herself clean of irritation in the shower at the end of the day when she heard her phone ring. Grabbing a big red towel, she stepped out, sliding on the wet tiles, and picked up the phone just as her machine was about to click in.
George was peacefully cooking again, and delectable scents of fresh coriander and chopped red onion were wafting up the spiral staircase.
‘Trish Maguire,’ she said into the phone, cutting into the recorded voice.
‘Oh, good. This is Mike Bridge. I thought I’d missed you again. So, you’ve the list of food and drinks. Terrific. What did the old man have before he died?’
Trish read out the list that had arrived from Deb that morning, which matched exactly what Cordelia had already suggested. It was going to give Trish considerable pleasure to tell Cordelia how closely Deb had followed their father’s preferences.
‘Grapefruit juice,’ said Dr Bridge with satisfaction, the Scottish accent clearer than usual in the rolled R and the very precise U. ‘In that case he had the whole package, didn’t he?’
‘I don’t understand. What package? And what does grapefruit tell you?’
‘Your list of his prescription drugs includes an antihistamine called terfenadine.’
‘I know,’ Trish said, trying to curb her impatience. ‘And it’s never prescribed concurrently with astemizole, which was also found in his body. Together they can, in rare cases, cause arrhythmias that can be fatal. But no one suggested that there was enough astemizole to do that. It was only a minute quantity they found, just enough to throw extra suspicion on his daughter.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. Although that adds to it.’
‘Oh?’ Trish wished he’d get on with it, but he’d done her a favour by even looking at the medical evidence. She’d have to put up with whatever games he wanted to play. She just hoped he’d finish them before George was ready for her. The sharp, spicy scents from the kitchen were making her mouth water.
‘Terfenadine is quite a lot cheaper than astemizole,’ Mike Bridge told her. ‘The kind of thing a practice might well prescribe for an older patient if they were trying to keep down their drugs bill.’
‘And?’
‘And it has a rare but occasionally fatal …’ He paused, as though for dramatic effect.
‘Fatal what?’ demanded Trish impatiently. ‘Come on.’
‘Interaction with grapefruit juice.’
‘You’re joking.’ Of all the possibilities Trish had been trying to believe, that had never crossed her mind.
‘Nope. Grapefruit juice can inhibit the metabolism of terfenadine, which—’
‘—would explain the apparent overdose the pathology labs found,’ said Trish, who didn’t want to play games.
‘Precisely. And that’s not all. That’s what I meant about the whole package. Now, listen, Trish.’
‘I am listening, and I’m taking notes.’
‘Good. Your Mr Whatlam had gout, which used to be treated with NSAIDs. You know what they are?’
‘Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,’ she said crisply.
‘Yup. Now, NSAIDs can, particularly in the elderly, cause peptic ulcers. OK so far?’
‘I can just about manage to keep up.’
‘Great,’ he said, apparently unaware of her mood. ‘When Mr Whatlam’s ulcer flared up, his doctor correctly advised him to stop taking the NSAIDs and instead put him on a maintenance dose of allopurinol. And to deal with the ulcer, he was put on Cisapride.’
‘I remember that, too,’ Trish said, wondering whether this was leading anywhere or whether Dr Bridge was so recently out of medical school that he wanted to parade his knowledge.
‘And Cisapride should never be prescribed with either astemizole or terfenadine.’
Trish felt as though her whole body had shut down for a second. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ said the doctor, as though he was enjoying himself, ‘the combination increases the possibility of arrhythmias, and in some very rare cases, those arrhythmias have been fatal. The Cisapride would have been a lot more dangerous to him than the tiny trace of astemizole. Add the grapefruit juice and you’ve a cocktail of interacting drugs, all liable to produce arrhythmias.’
‘Are you telling me, Dr Bridges, that you think his heart could have stopped without any suffocation of any kind? Either bag or pillow?’
‘Just that.’
‘But why didn’t they think of that at the trial?’
‘They? Which they would that be, Trish?’
‘The GP, the pathologists, the labs that tested the bodily fluids. Anyone.’
‘Or even the lawyers?’
‘Even them,’ Trish said, through her teeth. Phil Redstone should have checked every possibility. She couldn’t think why he hadn’t had a medical expert combing through every aspect of old Mr Whatlam’s medical state and treatment to see if there was anything in the autopsy and lab reports to explain any of it. If it was all as obvious as this, why hadn’t anyone noticed?
‘When was the death, exactly?’
‘Just over four years ago,’ Trish told him. ‘And the trial happened a year later.’
‘There’s your answer. I don’t think anyone had picked up the grapefruit juice problem then, or the interaction of the drugs. It’s only in the last two or three years that doctors have become aware of it. And there are still some doctors – and some pathologists – who haven’t come across it to this day.’
Trish suppressed her outrage. No one could have knowledge that hadn’t been discovered, but she still felt, viscerally, that doctors ought to know everything about the treatments they gave and the drugs they handed out. It sounded as though Foscutt’s prescriptions had been as dangerous to old Ian Whatlam as the heroin-paracetamol mix that Mandy’s pimp had provided.
‘But we’re still left with the astemizole,’ she murmured
‘You know that has a very long half-life, I suppose?’
‘Yes. That point at least was made at the trial. It sounds as though it was one of the very few that was.’ Trish was boiling with rage on Deb’s behalf. ‘Unfortunately, it had never been prescribed for anyone who was anywhere near him except for the daughter who’s been convicted of his murder.’
‘Yes, I know. And unfortunately I can’t help you there. I can’t see anything to account for it.’
‘How long before he died might he have taken the astemizole for some of it to remain in his system?’
‘It’s hard to say, Trish. In the elderly, drugs are not always metabolised as well as in your younger patient, which is why one’s supposed to prescribe a lower dose.’
‘But it could have been weeks?’
‘Oh, easily. Maybe months. I looked it up to check and the directory recommends that women of child-bearing age who are prescribed it should use contraception while they’re taking it and for several weeks afterwards.’
So, if we could only find someone else who’d ever been prescribed it, Trish thought, we might be home and dry.
‘Thank you very much, Dr Bridge.’
‘Call me Mike. Your mother does when we’re not in surgery.’
‘Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘It’s a pleasure. Meg’s always been one of my greatest supports here. I’d do anything for her. Maybe she’ll introduce us the next time you’re down here.’
‘I’d like that. And if the programme goes ahead, I’ll get the producer to get in touch with you.’
‘Sure. Oh, before you go …’
‘Yes?’
‘You might like to know that both allopurinal and Cisapride can induce rashes – in other words, urticaria. And angioneurotic oedema is only a severe form of urticaria.’
Trish could hardly breathe as the rage boiled over. When she could produce any sound out of her throat, she said, ‘You mean that the whole horrible, terrible situation he was in was caused by the mixture of prescription drugs he was taking?’
‘Could have been. It’s not that uncommon, particularly in
the elderly. Pharmacists are often very good at picking this kind of thing up, but unfortunately in your old man’s case, the doctor’s surgery dispensed the drugs, and the dispensing nurse probably never dreamed of doubting her boss’s skill. If the doctor was under time and emotional pressure – as he seems to have been from your notes – he might not have checked too carefully when he was prescribing.’
‘But it’s an outrage,’ Trish said, the last word erupting from her mouth. She wanted to see Dr Foscutt in a cell the size of Deb’s for the rest of his life, surrounded by the noise that battered her eardrums for twenty-four hours a day.
‘All drugs have side effects,’ said Mike Bridge peaceably, far too peaceably for Trish’s taste. ‘It’s nearly always a question of balancing a patient’s need for relief or cure with possible side-effect damage.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t be.’
‘You’ve probably had antibiotics yourself at some stage and then had to deal with the thrush they allowed to occur.’
That was true enough, but it did nothing to cool Trish’s fury. She was never going anywhere near a doctor again if she could possibly help it.
‘But I must go now. Goodbye.’
Trish put down the phone, wondering if she looked as weird as she felt. Light-headed and not at all sure of her balance, she thought she might faint from rage. For the first time she felt true sympathy for old Mr Whatlam.
‘Trish?’ George called up the stairs. ‘We’re ready.’
‘Great. On my way.’ She shook her head to clear it and reached for her leggings and T-shirt. Staggering, she reached the bottom of the spiral stairs two and a half minutes later.
George looked up. He was arranging an elaborate-looking salad on plates already holding grilled lamb chops and tiny squares of fried potatoes decorated with some herb or other. She sniffed and thought she could detect rosemary.
‘You all right, Trish? You look as though you’ve had a shock.’
‘Yes. But ultimately a good one. Progress in the Deborah Gibbert case.’
‘Good.’ There was enough heaviness in that word to make Trish raise her eyebrows and ask what the matter was. ‘I only thought how nice it’ll be when it’s over, this film of Anna’s. I might get you back then.’
‘Oh, George,’ Trish said, her conscience twisting inside her like a bit of barbed wire. Perhaps all the unusually elaborate food he’d been cooking had been intended to make her notice him and see how he felt. And perhaps, now she came to think of it, the unusual number of evenings when he’d had dinners out. ‘Have I neglected you?’
‘Not exactly,’ he said, in the kind of voice that means ‘yes’.
‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t immediately rush into questions about his own cases, which would have been a bit unsubtle, but gradually she worked round to them. His old cheerful smile told her he knew what she was doing, but that was all right. It was cheerful again. That was all that mattered.
Dr Foscutt turned his head on the scratchy pillow to check that Molly was still asleep. Her lips were a little parted and she was breathing quite noisily, for her, but regularly. He should be safe. He pushed back the single sheet that covered them both and slid out of bed, pausing to check on her. She slept on. He stared at her, as he automatically retied his pyjama cord and twisted the trousers round so that the unfastenable fly wouldn’t gape.
In the moonlight, which looked so cool but wasn’t, she seemed decades younger than in the daytime. He wished he could wake her. She might be able to make it all seem less awful. But she needed her sleep. He couldn’t disturb her until
he was certain, and even then he wasn’t sure it would be fair to tell her.
Every time he thought of the Whatlams or their daughter, his guts felt as though he was dropping forty feet into a crevasse. He couldn’t go on like this. The uncertainty was agony. And his patients were suffering. Oh, God! His patients.
He left the bedroom, clutching his grey-flannel trousers and a pair of tennis sneakers. He put them on in the hall and, almost silently, let himself out of the house to drive to the surgery.
At least in the middle of the night he’d have a free run with the records. There was no one around at that hour, and unless the on-call partner had to come in for something, there wouldn’t be anyone until seven in the morning.
The waiting room looked odd with no one in it, and the locked door to the dispensary was like an accusation. He averted his eyes and went into the archive room, where all the dead patients’ notes and old surgery diaries were kept. He ignored the notes; he knew there’d be nothing there. He’d checked, the police had checked, and the Crown Prosecution Service lawyers had checked. Even the defence lawyers hadn’t questioned them.
The surgery diaries were exactly where they should have been, in a neat pile, each one bound in dark blue with their metal spiral bindings gleaming. He found the one for the year of old Ian Whatlam’s death and leafed back through it, past the death, weeks past, months. He got all the way back before Christmas before he gave up.
He’d been right. There had been no surgery visits from either of the Whatlams. And yet he had seen her, poor Helen, he knew he had. She’d phoned in one day, months and months before the death, absolutely desperate. She’d been in such a state that his receptionist had asked permission to put
her through, even though interruption of surgery patients’ five-minute consultations was something he never allowed.
He could remember the morning. He’d been discussing young Mary Haskett’s recurring urinary infections and had had to break off his instructions about taking a glass of cranberry juice every day to talk to Helen Whatlam.
She wouldn’t be soothed, and she’d started to cry when he’d told her to bring Ian into the surgery the following week, as practice protocols demanded, so he’d been forced to say he’d call in on his way home to lunch.