Second Opinion (43 page)

She sat and thought for a long time, staring at the letter. The story was the nearest of any to the Oberlander one
that she had seen. Other letters spoke of years of seeking a pregnancy of their own via IVF and GIFT and other forms of fertility treatment; of long waits on lists of official adoption agencies, of the despair of watching the calendar move on and knowing that they were rapidly approaching the age at which they would no longer be regarded as eligible to adopt; only this one said anything about having adopted before. And the baby, he had written, did not thrive. An odd way of putting it, she thought; most nonmedical people might say a child had passed on, or been lost, or some other euphemism, or might despise the use of soft language and say bluntly it had died. But this man had written ‘did not thrive’ which rang strangely in her ears; it was a phrase used by paediatric experts for a child who stopped growing and seemed to be ailing for an unknown reason. Yet this man was not medical. At the start of his letter he’d described himself as a businessman. Why should he use such a phrase? And then he’d made such a point about having all the equipment a little boy would need, so the child who had not thrived for them had been a boy …

It happened yet again. She sat there and stared at the page; blinked and stared again; and then lifted her chin and laughed aloud. The cogs of her mind, that absurd mind of hers that juggled with cut-out bits of information and then slotted them neatly into place like a jigsaw had done the trick again.

‘Hillman,’ she said aloud. ‘That means the man from the high ground. Oberlander, in German, surely?’

31
  
  

She seemed to spend the entire day trying to reach him. She called the police station first of course, only to be told he was out. She left a message asking him to contact her. An hour later and then an hour after that she phoned again and was assured the message had been passed on, they could do no more, and she could hear the faint amusement in the voice of the person at the other end of the phone, which made her blush and slam the phone down angrily, feeling she couldn’t ring the police station again. So she called his flat, and all she got was the buzz of an ansaphone and his voice blandly inviting her to leave a message. Again she banged down the receiver; almost taking his absence as a deliberate personal insult.

She sat and glowered at her grimy office window and tried to decide what to do. She’d made him promises, hadn’t she, not to go off on her own, not to keep secrets from him? Well, she amended, not precisely
promises
, more undertakings to try not to behave so. Well, hadn’t she tried? She’d tried damned hard. Here she was sitting with a direct lead to the man they had been looking for all this time and just because she couldn’t reach Gus, he had to be left alone? Why, he could do anything in the time that might elapse before Gus was available! Run off, kill another baby maybe, who could say what he might not do? And she stifled the
awareness that this was nonsense. Hillman-cum-Oberlander (and she was completely convinced this was the case) could have no such intent, for if he had he would hardly have responded to a newspaper advertisement.

She jumped to her feet. Half-promise or no half-promise, she wasn’t going to sit about here waiting like a dutiful puppy dog for the master to come home. She would go and see Hillman. It could do no harm, surely, and if she came back with the case solved, ready to put in his hands, Gus could hardly object.

She was elated as she arranged with Sheila to hold the fort in her absence. Her gargantuan efforts at tidying over the past few days hadn’t been wasted. Now there was no reason whatsoever why she should not be off about police business, and so she told Sheila, who sniffed and grudgingly agreed to keep an eye out and to bleep her if anything urgent came up. The fact that she fervently hoped it would was not lost on George, who had a lively awareness of her staff’s views, but she only smiled cheerfully at her and went.

She took the tube for her journey westwards, climbing into a train at Shadwell and joining the District Line at Whitechapel. She sat contentedly as it rocked its way through the dusty tunnels, agreeably daydreaming of Gus’s admiration and praise and warm gratitude when she came back to him with the case half solved. It would be marvellous if the killing of Harry turned out to be linked with Hillman-Oberlander as well, she thought, but then was ashamed of herself once more. Harry’s death had been a tragedy; she had no right to diminish it to a mere puzzle that she would enjoy solving. Though to deny she would was impossible.

Sloane Square, when she emerged into it, was bustling with people, and the dull January day was lit up with the cheerful glow from shop windows and the remains of Christmas lights, and her spirits lifted even more. She spent far too little time in other parts of London,
she thought. I should go to more theatres and concerts, shop here in the smart and witty streets, live a little; even though she was enjoying herself hugely where she was in Shadwell.

As she turned to walk down Sloane Street in search of Manderly Mansions, the address on Hillman’s letter, she contemplated that fact. When she had come down from Inverness to take the Old East job — was it just a year ago? Amazing — she’d been very doleful about it. The surroundings had seemed to her drab beyond belief and the hospital itself depressingly shabby. But now she felt so much a part of the place, and so — the word came into her mind and surprised her a little — so fond of it, she had no more complaints. How much Gus was part of the pleasure of course, it was hard to be sure.

She looked down at the letter in her hand and concentrated on the matter she had come here for. No more private thoughts; only detective ones, she scolded herself. Only detective ones.

What sort of businessman was he to live in so elegant a block of flats? was the first detective question that came to her as she looked up at the facade of Manderly Mansions. Smart indeed: each window carefully boxed with glossy ivy; brass name plate glinting in the dull light; windows polished to a rich gleam; and a uniformed man standing on the front step.

He looked suspiciously at her when she asked for Mr Hillman and told her he could only let her in after he had telephoned Mr Hillman to be sure he was there.

‘Wouldn’t you know anyway, if you’re here all the time? You’d have seen him go out,’ George said. He looked at her forbiddingly. ‘It’s my job to call every flat when people come here, to see if they are at home to visitors,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s no part of my job to make any decision for them.’

‘Ah,’ George murmured. ‘So New York style security has arrived, has it? There’s a happy thought for a dreary day.’

‘Not for me to say,
madam
,’ said the uniform with insulting emphasis, and went into the building. She followed him, enjoying his hauteur. ‘Who are you, she says,’ the man said, one hand over the phone.

George thought for a moment and said, ‘Tell him — her? the Hillmans, it’s about the advertisement.’

He spoke into the phone, listened, nodded and hung up.

‘Lift’s over there,’ he said sourly, making no effort to show her the way, but she found it and went up to the third floor, noting the number of the flat beside the relevant button. The lift smelled of beeswax polish and flowers and was thickly carpeted, not only all over the floor but on the walls as well. This place breathes money, she thought, and her excitement sharpened and tightened her breathing.

The door of Flat 32 was open as she stepped out of the lift and looked to her left. A middle-aged woman in a blue striped nylon overall stood there looking at her with a face quite expressionless; no welcome, no surprise, nothing.

‘Good morning,’ she said as George came up to her.

‘A — Mrs Hillman?’ George ventured.

‘What’s your name?’ the woman demanded.

‘I’m Dr George Barnabas. I’ve come about the advertisement that appeared in last week’s —’

There was a little noise from behind the overalled woman and a voice cried in a high tone, ‘Doctor — Oh! It’s all right, Olive! I’ll come, it’s all right.’

The nylon overall looked at George again, but with some expression now: a faint sneer. George watched her retreating into the flat, leaving her place at the door to be taken by a very thin woman in a dark green dress that even to George’s not particularly experienced eye was an expensive one.

‘I’ll phone David right away,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Right away. Doctor, you say? Oh, I’m so glad you came! It’s wonderful that you took the time to actually come — David didn’t tell me — do sit down, I’ll just call him. Olive! Fetch
some coffee and so forth, will you? Now, are you comfortable there? I’ll just phone …’

She flurried away to the other side of the very large drawing room into which she had taken George, reaching for the gilded and white enamel telephone which had been tricked up to look as a Louis Quinze one might have looked had the France of the period ever heard of Alexander Graham Bell, leaving George to settle herself a little gingerly on a sofa that had been upholstered in so heavy a velvet that it made her feel she was slipping back into the womb.

She looked around the room as the woman murmured and was first amused and then puzzled. The money that had been spent in here had to be staggering and it was that which seemed funny to her. It was so excessive. The curtains were the same thick blue velvet as the sofa, as were four massive armchairs. The gilt tables and a buhl escritoire against one wall were obviously costly antiques and the floor, huge as it was, was completely covered in a heavy Chinese carpet of magnificent depth and design.

Her puzzlement resolved itself into one question: how was it that people who lived as richly as this had appeared at an NHS hospital in an area as shabby as Shadwell? If this woman was the female half of the Oberlanders, as she suspected (and she might have to find out from Prudence Jennings if she recognized her, unless they admitted it to her themselves), why had she taken her ill baby to Old East? Why hadn’t she taken him to a private doctor, or even a nearby NHS hospital? It would have been what George would have expected of someone who lived in these conditions.

The woman hurried back from the phone and sat down close beside George to stare at her with wide dark eyes. She looked, George thought, to be about forty or so, maybe a little less; she had one of those bony faces that made it hard to tell. George looked down at the woman’s hands,
which were clasped nervously on her lap, and saw how thin and fragile they were, and wondered briefly if the woman was anorexic. She could have been. The green dress was not designed to cling to the figure but a soft and draped affair that would disguise the effects of such behaviour.

‘David said not to talk about this till he comes. He won’t be long, his office is just down the road. But I have to ask some questions, don’t I? Like, I mean, are you the same group? Did she send you? And if you’re not, how is it that you’re able to do anything? We’ve been trying so hard for, oh, so long, and everyone said it was impossible, the Government had clamped down and there was no hope and we can’t go to see for ourselves what we can do because David can’t get a visa or something and he won’t let me go alone, he’s so protective and careful and anyway I don’t think I could —’

George tried not to show her bewilderment. ‘Which group?’ she said carefully. ‘Go where? I’m not sure that —’

‘But aren’t you working with these countries? Romania and Bosnia and so on? That’s what we were told before. Or are you dealing with Brazil? I’d heard about them but I wasn’t certain, but then David told me that they were lovely, just as dark eyed and dark haired as us, so I don’t mind at all,’

‘Perhaps I should wait till your husband comes, Mrs Hillman,’ George said, not sure if she was cutting off a source of information, but also concerned that she might be mishandling this strange woman. She certainly had a wild look about her, and was now sweating heavily across her forehead and upper lip with anxiety, even though the room was only pleasantly warm. ‘It will be easier than explaining twice, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes, that’s what David said, but you know how it is … Some coffee? These biscuits are nice, I made them yesterday. I do so love doing things in the kitchen even though it does irritate Olive when I get in her way,
but she understands it’s so difficult to be busy when there’s — when there’s not a lot — Oh dear!’ Her eyes filled with tears and she rubbed her face with both hands, smearing her eyeshadow a little. She looked deeply unhappy and very vulnerable and for a moment George wanted to reach out and hug the pathos out of her.

The sound of a key in the door lifted the spirits of both of them. George relaxed with relief as the nervous woman leapt to her feet and ran to meet the arrival, and registered the need not to let herself be infected by Mrs Hillman’s tension. It wouldn’t be easy, for she couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone in such a state of anxiety outside a hospital ward.

The woman came back clinging to her husband’s arm. He was a round man in every way; face, eyes, body, glasses even. His surprisingly black hair was ridged on his head like a corrugated iron roof and he shone with cleanliness and comfort and a sense of his own worth.