A Bleeding of Innocents (20 page)

‘Of course. They said the operation went smoothly. I interviewed them individually and put to them Swann's allegation that Dr Saunders was intoxicated. They all denied it, including Staff Nurse Carson whom Swann said he had the story from. What more was I to do? I'd no reason to call them liars. I still haven't. It still seems likeliest to me that Mr Swann was wrong, that he believed it but he was wrong. People are not at their most rational when their emotions are involved.'

Shapiro nodded slowly. He refrained from observing that people are not at their most truthful when their jobs are involved either. ‘It's a pity you didn't tell us this when Kerry Page was murdered.'

Mr Hawley was apologetic. ‘Chief Inspector, if it had occurred to me I would have done. There was no reason to think her death had anything to do with the hospital. I understood her husband was the prime suspect.'

‘And when Mrs Board was shot outside the nurses'home?'

‘I remembered, of course, that they'd worked together. But I still didn't make the connection. It was four years ago, and anyway it seemed Swann had finally bowed to the inevitable. I'd told Mrs Board he'd dropped it, phoned Dr Saunders to tell him, and he said he'd let Mrs Page know – apparently he saw her from time to time, they worked for the same organization as you know. Then I drew a line under it. Only when Dr Saunders too was killed was the connection with the Swann case apparent to me.'

Shapiro breathed heavily down his ancestral nose. The man was clever: he knew stupidity wasn't a criminal act. ‘If you'd told Inspector Graham what you've told me, Emil Saunders would still be alive. I don't think you're legally culpable of his death. But between you and me, Mr Hawley, I reckon you're responsible for it. If you'd been a little less concerned with the hospital's reputation and a little more concerned about the welfare of its patients and staff, none of this need have happened. Your attitude drove George Swann to a kind of madness and you let him kill three people rather than admit it. Even if the law has no call on you, I'd like to think your own conscience had.' He sighed. ‘But I'd be kidding myself, wouldn't I, Mr Hawley?'

As they stared at each other across the administrator's desk the phone rang. After a long pause Hawley picked it up. Then he passed it to Shapiro. ‘Your office, Chief Inspector.'

Liz sent a message to Shapiro to meet them at the shop. She still didn't know how it was going to work out but she believed they were on the right trail now.

As they hurried to her car she glanced at Donovan's arm. ‘If this gets rough will you be able to cope? I could second a beefy constable.'

Donovan shook his head. ‘Swann won't get rough. I told you, he's a gentle man.'

Liz gave him a sceptical look. ‘Dr Saunders might not agree with you.'

Donovan rocked his good hand. ‘What happened to Saunders was four years in the making. You can build up a lot of hate in four years. I don't think that basically he's a violent man – a man who'd react violently to anyone crossing him.'

‘He might consider being arrested for murder as rather more than just being crossed,' murmured Liz.

‘No. It's like you said: he doesn't care what happens to him. If we get to him in time he'll go to prison; if we don't he'll kill himself. It's all the same to him. He's done what he set out to do, he doesn't care what happens now.'

Liz drove the dark canyons of narrow streets hemmed in by high black buildings rather faster than she could have justified to Traffic Branch.

Castle Place was the oldest part of town, older even than the canal basin and the warehouses. The current buildings were Georgian – workaday rather than Grand Design Georgian but pleasing in their proportions, although unfortunate alterations, in the way of plate-glass shop-fronts, neon signs, and low-maintenance energy efficient double-glazing, had been added to many of them. The ruins on Castle Mount, not much more now than a jumble of stone piers towering against the sky, glowered down in mute disapproval.

Castle Antiques was one of the prettier buildings in the square. The ground floor had been painted Wedgwood blue with the frames of the twelve-pane windows picked out in white. The name, and that of George Swann, Proprietor, arched in curly script over the elegant fan light of the doorcase. It all looked original. Of course, an antiques dealer would have the inside track when it came to restoration.

But the other thing Liz noticed about Castle Antiques was that while a great deal of work had been done to it, with both skill and taste employed in its renovation, very little had been done recently. The paint was showing signs of wear and a cracked drain-pipe had left a trail of mossy damp down one side of the frontage. With a little imagination, Liz thought, you could suppose it had been untouched for four years.

The heavy wooden door, cherry-red, was locked. A card in the window read
Closed.
There was no sign of movement in the shop or at the windows above in response to Liz's knock. She stared at the building in dismay. That door wouldn't yield to a good kick: it would take tools and time and they had neither. She could have broken a window but the narrow mullions would have kept a child out and there were locks on the fastenings.

‘Round the back,' Donovan said curtly, and she turned to see him sprint off round the comer. Abandoning the unassailable front she followed.

A narrow entry gave access to the back yards. Logic said there was one but you had to know where to look, for it opened on to the side-street through what looked like someone's garage door. Diving through in Donovan's wake Liz found herself in the kind of townscape where the Artful Dodger would have felt at home: close, sunless, grimy, confusing. It did not escape her notice that Donovan seemed at home here too.

He'd counted the front doors on Castle Place and now he was counting the yard doors. When the numbers tallied he threw the door open almost without breaking pace. Liz, breathless, was on his heels as he crossed to the back of the house through a yard full of broken drawers and wardrobe doors: the bones of old furniture that had gone there to die.

The back door was up a flight of stone steps; it too was locked. But the kitchen window was modern and big enough to admit whatever light found its way into the yard. Donovan hurled half a Windsor chair through it and glass crashed into the stone sink within and on to the steps without.

But his wrist was a significant handicap and Liz couldn't see how he could climb over to the window one-handed, though she had no doubt that if he'd been alone he would have tried. A detective sergeant with a damaged wrist had his limitations but one with a broken neck would be a positive liability. She laid her hand on his arm. ‘Step aside, Sergeant. This is a job for Wonder Woman.'

While Donovan stared, steadying herself on his shoulder she climbed first on to the rail, then across to the windowsill. Avoiding the glass as best she could she snaked through and disappeared inside. A moment later the key turned in the lock and she opened the door, sucking a cut finger. ‘Impressed?'

He shook his head. ‘You'd never catch the real Wonder Woman bleeding.'

They moved into the house, keeping together, unsure what they would find: a multiple murderer, the body of a multiple murderer, or an irate antiques dealer demanding compensation for his broken window.

The kitchen no longer performed its original function but, with the rest of the ground floor, served the shop. Two of the four rooms connected through an arch to make a showroom, behind were an office and the kitchen which was used for cleaning and repairs. They checked each room but found no one. Liz moved towards the stairs.

Without seeming to hurry Donovan got there first. ‘My turn, ma'am.'

She was about to order him aside but thought better of it. Unfit as he was for any kind of physical encounter, he needed his self-esteem more than he needed her protection. She gave a faint smile. ‘I'm not going to fight you for the privilege.'

He grinned. ‘I'm only going first'cause I know he hasn't got the shot-gun.'

Half-way up the stairs, too late to change places, Liz murmured, ‘At least, we know he hasn't got
that
shotgun.'

On the first landing they had a choice of three doors and another staircase. Behind the nearest door Liz found a dining room furnished with good but slightly shabby pieces in a variety of periods and styles: stock which had failed to sell. From the dry, slightly stale air Liz thought it hadn't been used much recently. Donovan found the new kitchen with unwashed pots in the sink. The third door was a living room with the television, a tea-tray on a low table, and in one corner a playpen where a rabbit in evening dress hung by one ear from the bars. Apart from the rabbit, which greeted them with a knowing look, there was no one in any of the rooms.

Donovan indicated the stairs and Liz nodded. She said softly, ‘If he's here, that's where he has to be.'

There were two bedrooms and a bathroom. Donovan checked the bathroom but it was empty so they tried the bedroom doors.

The master bedroom was a large room at the front of the house decorated in pastel chintzes and featuring a walnut wardrobe, an oak one, and a chest of drawers and dressing table in rich red mahogany. Brocade curtains made for larger windows hung from a vast pelmet pleated to fit. The curtains were pulled across the window but showed the universal sign of having been drawn by a man: they didn't quite meet in the middle.

Swann was sitting on the half-tester bed. He glanced up at her entry with a slightly surprised but not wholly displeased look and smiled. His wife had trained him well: he'd taken his shoes off before putting his feet on the bed.

‘Boss.' Donovan was in the open door of the other room, half in and half out. The stillness of his long body and the timbre of his voice said he'd found something. Liz backed out of the master bedroom and joined him. When she touched his arm he stood aside to let her through.

It was a child's room, decorated in primary colours, with circus scenes on the walls and a hot-air balloon for a lampshade. Rainbow-coloured curtains had been drawn more carefully than the brocade ones next door. A child's bed lay along the wall and a duvet covered in cartoon characters was humped over a child-sized mound.

Liz stepped softly across the floor. She didn't want to startle a sleeping child but she needed to know if he was all right. As she approached the bed she said, quietly reassuring, ‘Are you asleep, Danny? Don't be afraid – I'm a policewoman, I'm just here to see you're all right.'

There was no response from the bed. Liz wondered if the little boy was genuinely asleep or cowering in silent terror under the bedclothes at the sound of a stranger in his room. She reached out to ease the duvet away from his head, still talking in the same quiet, friendly voice. ‘I like your room, Danny. Did you choose the pictures? I like this one of the clown. Do you like the circus, Danny? Does your dad take you sometimes?'

Her outstretched fingers reached the upper edge of the duvet. ‘Will you come out for a minute while we have a quick chat?' she asked. ‘Danny?' She lifted the top of the duvet.

The little white face that greeted her was set in such sweet repose, the eyes shut, the long lashes curving down to the rounded cheeks, the rosebud lips pursed in a thoughtful pout, that at first she thought all her reassuring noises had failed to rouse him. With a careful fingertip she brushed a lick of fair hair off his satiny brow.

Donovan heard the breath catch in her throat. A stride brought him to her side.

The satin skin was as cold as ice, as smoothly unresponsive as wax. Nothing she could do would startle Danny Swann from his sleep. He was dead. The little body was already stiffening.

After Emil Saunders she had thought nothing would shock her again. But she was shocked by this. The eyes she raised to Donovan's were deep with tragedy: this beautiful child lying dead in his bed in his perfect child's bedroom. Her voice cracked. ‘Donovan, his
son
! He's killed his own son!'

Donovan's good hand fastened on her arm with enough pressure to steady her. She was glad of his strength. Gradually a little of it seemed to pass from his body into hers, warming the cold veins. By degrees the horror settled in her brain, finding its own level, no longer monopolizing her thinking. With hardly a tremble she said, ‘He's in the other room.'

Donovan moved towards the door. ‘You stay with the kid.'

But there was nothing she could do for Danny Swann. She went with Donovan into the main bedroom.

Swann looked up again with his amiable smile as if they were customers in his shop not police officers in his bedroom. He recognized Donovan, more by the plaster than the face, nodded a friendly greeting. Then he saw the hollowness in Liz's eyes and nodded again, understandingly. ‘You've seen Danny.'

‘Did you kill him?'

There was sorrow but nothing she recognized as guilt in Swann's voice and he answered without hesitation. ‘Yes, I did.'

‘How?'

There was a small brown bottle on the dressing table by the bed. Beside it lay a syringe charged with an all but colourless liquid. ‘With that. Morphine. I got it from Dr Saunders. I told him it was for Danny. It did a good job, he's safe now. Danny's safe with his mother, and if you'd been five minutes later I'd be on my way to join them.' He glanced between Liz and Donovan and said, as if he already knew the answer, ‘I don't suppose—?'

Liz shook her head once, sharply. ‘Sergeant.'

Donovan put himself between Swann and the syringe. Swann, resigned, smiled at him. ‘How's the wrist now?'

‘Fine,' said Donovan. He didn't know what else to say.

Liz's voice was hard. ‘You killed Dr Saunders as well? And Maggie Board? And Kerry Page?' At each name Swann nodded again. Liz's iron control cracked. ‘In God's name, man, why? And why Danny? Why your son?'