Midnight Murders (9 page)

Phil walked to the tables holding the bags. ‘We've been through this lot with a fine toothcomb; got all the prints we could find. Only two sets, one matches one case and handbag, the other matches the second set, so the chances are they belong to the victims. Here's a list of contents found in both sets of cases and handbags. Nothing a girl wouldn't take with her on holiday. Selection of clothes – hairdrier, cosmetics, shoes. There's a nurse's uniform, belt with silver buckle, and a couple of nurses' textbooks in one of the cases. There's a driving licence in the better of the two handbags for an Elizabeth Moore, twenty-four years of age. A couple of certificates rolled into a tube at the bottom of the bag identify her as a state registered nurse. Prescription in the second handbag for tranquillisers made out to a C. Moon. No address, but there's a Compton Castle stamp. If she was an inmate, you should be able to track her down through hospital records.'

‘I'll get to work on it.' Peter felt as though another minute in the fetid atmosphere would suffocate him.

‘Feel free to take whatever you want. I'll get one of the lads to help you with the suitcases. And here – ' He handed Peter a sheet of paper.

‘What's this?' Peter squinted at the illegible scribble that covered the page.

‘Report on the dog. Sorry, our assistant's sick and we don't rate a replacement. I thought you could get someone to process it in the station. Nostrils, upper part of the lungs and air passages filled with dirt. Traces of curare in the bloodstream. I'd say it had been drugged and buried alive.'

Peter paused on his way to the door. ‘You sure about that?'

‘You questioning my professionalism?'

‘No, it's just that – '

‘What, Sergeant Collins?' Phil Thomas asked.

‘I wonder why someone would go to the trouble of killing a dog in exactly the same way they've murdered three women.'

‘That's for you to find out,' Thomas said with a glimmer of a smile. ‘I've done my bit. Now it's your turn.'

Trevor hesitated at the entrance to the perspex tunnel that connected his ward to the main hospital building. He paced up and down, debating whether to turn around and go into the garden. The grounds might have been a pleasant option if there weren't so many people there he knew; rookies and older colleagues he'd worked with –

He turned on his heel and retreated to the security of his own room. He gasped for breath as he fumbled with the door-handle, seeking an excuse to explain his cowardice. His wallet – that was it. If he was going as far as the old hospital, he might as well keep going. Walk to the main gate, and wait for a bus. Go into town, get his hair cut. And if he took his wallet and his credit cards, maybe even buy some clothes.

He found his wallet, opened his wardrobe door and lifted out his grubby anorak. Slipping it on over his shirt, he stuffed the wallet into his inside pocket. He stood before the door. All he had to do was open it, walk down the tunnel and he'd be in the main building, close to the police HQ.

He jerked the door open, hitting his thumb painfully as the handle sprang back. Looking neither left nor right, he walked straight ahead, to the end of the corridor and, like a diver plunging into a deep pool, set foot in the tunnel. He took one step, then another, then another – walking on blindly and mechanically.

When the white walls and floor closed around him, he fought off a panic attack. Wiping clammy hands down the sides of his jeans, he let the air slowly out of his lungs and forced another breath. Provided he kept going, one step at a time, it wouldn't take him long. Patients and nurses walked this way every day, without thinking anything of it. Closing his eyes against the blinding white glare, he drove himself forwards. He heard footsteps echoing behind him, and jumped to the side of the tunnel.

‘Hi, Trevor.' Karl Lane passed him, a bundle of files tucked beneath his arm.

‘Hi,' Trevor managed to whisper after Karl had moved on. He stood pressed against the side of the tunnel, his eyes closed, until he could no longer hear Karl's footsteps. Only then did he move hesitantly into the centre of the tunnel again. One step, then another, then another. Repeated again and again and again –

‘Sergeant Joseph,' Sarah Merchant, a constable who usually worked in the computer room at the station, greeted him as he emerged into the hall of the main building.

Trevor wiped sticky hands over his jeans again and looked at her.

‘It's good to see you up and about, sir.' She was clearly stunned by his sickly, emaciated appearance.

‘Thank you, Constable Merchant,' Trevor concealed his panic behind a brusque, businesslike facade. ‘Is Sergeant Collins around?'

‘I haven't seen him this morning, sir, but Inspector Evans and Superintendent Mulcahy are in the mobile HQ. Would you like me to fetch them?'

Before she had a chance to walk over and knock at the door of the makeshift unit, Dan jumped down from the van and called out to Trevor.

‘You've saved us a trip. We were on our way to see you. Come in.' He opened the door wide and ushered Trevor inside the mobile unit. Trevor recognised the surroundings. The overflowing ashtrays, the scattering of dirty coffee mugs, the bins crammed full of take-away food wrappings; typewritten papers and reports strewn from one end of the van to the other, and piles of tabloid newspapers badly folded and stacked in the corner, all with page-three girls uppermost.

‘Coffee?' Dan thrust a mug at him, and Trevor took it, not because he wanted a drink, but because it gave him something to do with his hands.

‘You look better today,' Bill commented tactlessly.

It was on the tip of Trevor's tongue to say he didn't feel any better, but he knew his whining would irritate Bill when everyone on the force was working flat-out to solve a difficult case. Instead he said the first thing that came into his head.

‘Thought I'd go into town and get my hair cut.' He could have kicked himself. Now he was committed to going into the town, when it had taken all the courage he possessed to get this far.

‘Good idea. You look like a stray sheepdog,' Bill agreed.

‘I overheard Vanessa talking at breakfast this morning.' Trevor looked at the others, but they were waiting for him to continue. ‘She's been telling the other patients that she managed to get a good look at the killer.'

‘Has she now?' Mulcahy stroked his stubbly chin.

‘And I thought – ' Trevor stammered, succumbing to yet another panic attack. He was back where he had been before his accident; working on a murder investigation he wanted no part of. He could get hurt again – killed even, this time.

‘Being a detective, you thought that if the killer was within earshot, Vanessa Hedley's not going to live much longer,' Dan finished for him.

‘That's about the size of it.' Trevor was grateful that he didn't have to say more.

‘What exactly did she say?'

‘She gave no useful description,' Trevor said. ‘She said he was huge, enormous, with black hair – '

‘Which could have been a hood or even a balaclava if he'd been wearing a coat,' Dan broke in.

‘And evil eyes.'

‘Evil eyes?' Dan exchanged glances with Bill.

‘I watched two officers from the window of my room this morning as they walked around the flowerbed where the first body was found. I couldn't even make out their features, let alone see their eyes.'

‘Are you saying that she didn't see anything?'

‘No.' Trevor gripped the edge of the padded bench. He was finding it a tremendous strain to talk to Dan and Bill. He'd forgotten how cynical police officers were by nature. And he was left with the uncomfortable feeling that neither believed a single word he was saying. ‘She must have seen something; the finding of the body confirms that. All I'm saying is that I doubt she could have seen his features from that distance.'

‘Unless he walked up to her window?' Bill suggested.

‘Or she already knew who he was,' Dan suggested.

CHAPTER NINE

Vanessa Hedley's attentive audience did not desert her that morning. Roland, Michael, Lucy and Alison dogged her from breakfast, into therapy classes, and in the garden during the coffee break. Spencer watched from his room as they followed Vanessa around the flowerbeds that were being painstakingly reinstated to their former glory by an angry, noisy Jimmy Herne, who was commanding his trainees as though he were directing army battalions in military manoeuvres.

‘I know Harry's always on to us to get our charges interested in something, dear boy,' Adam Hayter lisped when he visited Spencer, ‘but I think he'd draw the line at gruesome murder, don't you?'

‘Probably.' Spencer was nursing a foul hangover, and had already promised himself that he would never allow alcohol in any shape or form to pass his lips again.

‘I must say though,' Adam chattered, ‘it's made the little darlings easier to deal with. They're too busy gossiping to think of going bonzo bananas. I even found the time to make a nice lamb stew for Dotty and me in my first class this morning. And that, darling, simply isn't normal.'

‘What isn't normal?' Lyn asked, as she joined them.

‘For our sweeties to be so quiet,' Adam purred. ‘Look at the little angels hanging on to Vanessa's every gory word. What is it about murder that excites everyone?'

‘I'm damned if I know!' Spencer exploded savagely, turning his back to the window. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Adam?'

‘I came to borrow the tinsiest, tiniest choccy biccy,' Adam smirked, his diffident smile carefully calculated to bring out his dimples.

‘You know where I keep them.'

Adam went to Spencer's desk. ‘Thank you, darling. You won't tell Dotty, will you?' Adam helped himself to three of the biscuits, and skipped out of the door.

‘It isn't often the wind blows you down here, Lyn. Can I do something for you?' Spencer asked.

‘I came to beg a favour,' she began warily. Spencer was more even-tempered than most of the staff in Compton Castle, including Harry Goldman, who saw it as his duty to remain calm through everything fate, the authorities and the patients threw at him. She'd never seen Spencer snap at anyone before, even Adam, who was unfailingly irritating. ‘They've finally fitted a bolt to the inside of the drug cupboard, but in the process they stripped most of the paint from the outside of the door, and it draws attention to the one place we'd like to keep low-profile. I wondered if you had any white paint to spare. It doesn't have to be gloss. Anything will do to patch it in, until maintenance gets around to re-painting it. You know how long they take.'

‘I do,' he commented. ‘I'll take a look at it for you at lunch time.'

‘I'm on split shift today, but if I'm not there, Jean will be around.'

‘Fine.' He picked up his coffee and returned to the window.

Lyn walked back to her ward. She saw that Spencer wasn't the only one watching the patients in the hospital grounds. Dotty Clyne and Harry Goldman were also studying the group gathered around Vanessa, from Harry's office window. And she saw Tony glance their way as he talked to a police officer in the drive. She only hoped that the attention wouldn't send Vanessa over the edge again.

Vanessa finished her tour of the garden, and returned to the therapy block. Basking in the glow of attention, she even began to flirt mildly with Roland. As she continued to wander through the corridors and rooms of Compton Castle, she was unaware of all but the most obvious glances and comments that came her way.

But among those watching, was someone who did not seek to coax more information from her. Someone who walked discreetly down the corridors, someone who stood outside the open door of the therapy rooms as Vanessa continued to excite her audience with gripping stories of the live burial in the grounds.

It didn't matter that Vanessa's story owed more to memories of horror films than reality. Submerged in her ramblings lay the kernels of truths. But nothing could be done immediately. It was daylight – people – far too many people were around. Later, when darkness fell, there would be fewer staff on duty and Vanessa would be sleepy from the increased dose of tranquillisers she'd proudly announced were to be administered to her to help her recover from her traumatic experience. Later – no one would notice anyone slipping from one quiet room to another – later – but not too late to prevent Vanessa from spending yet another day saying too much.

Trevor stood outside the mobile police HQ. He leaned on his stick and shivered, as the fresh spring breeze penetrated the thin denim of his worn jeans and shabby anorak. He wanted to rush back up the drive as fast as his shaky legs would carry him, to the safe, familiar confines of his room. But Dan was standing next to him.

‘I'll walk with you to the gate,' Dan offered.

‘That's not necessary,' Trevor replied.

‘I want to see the officer on gate duty, to check the names of everyone who visited this morning. We're trying to establish a pattern for the hospital. To find out exactly who – '

‘Comes in, and who goes out, at certain times of the day. In other words, the people we can expect to find within these walls at any given time,' Trevor finished for him.

‘That's about the size of it,' Dan said good-temperedly. ‘I'd forgotten you'd worked with Serious Crimes before.'

‘Not often,' Trevor conceded.

‘You didn't enjoy the experience?'

‘I was used to the Drug Squad.'

It was close to the staff lunchtime, and the first shift of nurses, doctors and therapists were walking through the gardens towards the staff dining room in the old hospital.

‘That's interesting.' Dan monitored the groups as they walked through the side door of the main building.

‘What?'

‘The staff are all walking through the grounds. Every one I've spoken to, doctors, nurses, Tony Waters, they all say how useful those tunnels are, yet not one of them appears to use them.'

‘Can you blame them?' Trevor asked.

‘No. I don't know about you, but those shiny white corridors give me the creeps. It's like a poor man's film version of the road to heaven.'

* * *

‘Inspector!' The constable manning the gate jumped stiffly to attention.

‘You've met Sergeant Joseph?' Evans introduced Trevor.

‘Haven't had the pleasure, sir.' The rookie nodded to Trevor.

‘I'll be on my way, Dan,' Trevor moved on. If Dan hadn't been behind him, he would have turned around. But as he limped past the barrier and through the main gates, he sensed Dan's eyes boring into the back of his head.

The bus stop was just outside the gates, and when he reached it, he rested on his stick and looked around. The eyes had existed only in his imagination. Dan was standing with his back to him, talking to the constable and neither was watching him.

He stared ahead at the grey expanse of road and pavement, the trees fringing the small park across from the hospital, their delicate new leaves wavering in the wind. An old man walked towards him, leading a tired old spaniel. The man touched his hat and nodded to Trevor; his manners a relic from another, politer age.

He'd made it! He was outside the gates. The enormity of his achievement suddenly hit him. Spencer had warned him it might take days, if not weeks, before he got this far. Yet here he was at the bus stop, only one day away from the shivering panic attack that had driven him back into his room from the door leading out of his block.

He glanced at his watch; it was nearly two o'clock. Cars were streaming past, but no buses. How long had it been since he'd last sat on a bus? Ten years? He hadn't even thought to ask how often they stopped outside the hospital, and there wasn't a timetable in sight. Perhaps he should walk back? At least as far as the porter on gate duty.

A small, bright-red car drove out of the gates and pulled up in front of him. Lyn reached over and opened the passenger door.

‘Going into town?'

‘I was thinking of it,' he admitted.

‘Hop in. I'll give you a lift.'

‘There's no need – '

‘The buses only run every half hour, and you've just missed one. Can't you tell? You're the only one waiting here.'

Trevor hobbled hesitantly forward. Pushing his stick into the back seat of the car, he held on to the door and climbed clumsily into the passenger seat.

‘I'm working a split shift today,' she explained. ‘And I hate split shifts. So I thought I'd go into town and spend some money to cheer myself up.' She slammed the car into gear and pulled off sharply, cutting in behind a fast-moving Mercedes.

‘Won the pools?' he asked, after racking his brains for something to say. Had he always found making conversation this difficult? He tried to remember the people he'd talked to before his accident and what he'd said to them.

‘No. Just celebrated my twenty-first birthday.'

‘Congratulations.'

‘You're late; it was last week. And my parents, not knowing what else to give me, sent me a cheque. I intend to buy a whole new wardrobe. An utterly extravagant and up-to-the-minute wardrobe. It hasn't been much fun trying to live on a student nurse's money for the last three years.'

‘It couldn't have been,' he agreed.

‘But hopefully all that struggling will soon be over with.'

‘You've sat your finals?'

‘Three weeks ago.' She held up her hand, fingers crossed.

‘You'll pass.'

‘I wish I had your confidence. Where are you off to? To buy a new wardrobe as well?'

‘I was thinking of getting my hair cut, but you're right, I do need a new wardrobe. From the state of what I'm wearing, desperately.'

‘I didn't mean it that way,' she blushed. ‘I must have sounded patronising. I'm sorry.'

‘Forget it.' It was most peculiar, but her embarrassment only served to put him at his ease. ‘After searching through the clothes Peter brought from my flat, I've come to the conclusion that either he rummaged through my rag bag, or all my clothes should be relegated to one.'

‘He probably didn't want to bring your best clothes into hospital.'

‘I've never had best clothes,' he admitted. ‘Undercover work for the Drug Squad called for the charity shop rejects.'

‘I can't imagine someone not taking any interest in their clothes.'

He stared out of the car window, and checked off the familiar landmarks. They were travelling through the east side of town, towards the suburb where he had bought his flat. Was it really only eight years ago? Somehow it seemed as though he'd done it in another lifetime. He and his one-time girlfriend, Mags, had bought it together, although he had paid for it. She had always balked at anything that wasn't frivolous; entertainments, clothes, relationships – especially relationships. But, he and Mags had been over and done with for a long time.

Strange, he'd been devastated when she'd left him to move in with a married man who'd deserted his wife. Now he could barely remember what she looked like. Yet they'd been together for six years; longer than some marriages, and long enough for him to come to hate the flat, the decor, the furniture, the fitted kitchen and even the fancy Persian cat, all chosen by Mags and abandoned by her when she'd moved on.

He'd been lucky to rent out the place, furniture, fittings, cat and all, to another copper. He could see it now; set high on the hill that towered above the town. That had been its major attraction; the view over the town, and the bay.

Trevor thought of the scruffy, poky collection of small rooms over Frank's mini-market in the old, neglected Victorian dock area that he'd moved to afterwards. The unfashionable end the town planners hadn't even considered when they'd designed and built the new marina.

‘Where do you want to be dropped off?'

Lost in thought, he'd forgotten Lyn was driving him. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. Did you say something?'

‘I was asking where you wanted to be dropped off.'

‘Anywhere. It doesn't matter.'

‘Of course it does. If you want to get your hair cut, the only possible place is the unisex salon on the Marina.'

‘Your family own it?'

‘No,' she laughed. ‘But I approve of the results that walk out of there. And, my brother swears by Lucien who works there. And he needs to look good, he's an accountant. Like my father.'

‘You have your hair cut there?'

‘There's no point. Mine's so long, I trim the ends once a month with nail scissors.'

‘As I have nowhere else in mind, I'll take you up on that suggestion.'

‘If it's clothes you're after, you should go to one of the menswear shops in the main arcade.'

‘I should?'

‘Shopping is something of a passion with me.'

‘I'm beginning to find that out.'

‘I must sound shallow.'

‘No.' He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Seeing her outside the hospital for the first time, she looked younger than her twenty-one years. Perhaps it was the change of scene. Driving into town, and chatting casually, had put their relationship on a different footing to that of nurse and patient. Somehow, somewhere on the journey she had lost whatever authority she held over him.

‘My mother's a shopaholic,' she explained. ‘As a child she taught me that daddies make the money and the women in the family spend it. I'm afraid she ingrained some bad habits into me from an early age, but now I curb my shopping expeditions to splurges at birthdays and Christmas. And I always buy my father and brother clothes in those small shops in the arcade. The cut on their trousers and jeans is superb, and the sweaters, especially the hand-knitted ones, are very good. Here I go rabbiting on again.'

‘I don't mind. At the moment I find it easier to listen than make the effort to talk.'