The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (19 page)

Cooke’s voice dropped so low that Craig struggled to hear his words.

“Repeat that for the tape please, Dr Cooke.”

The words were clearer the second time, but said with an exhaustion that signalled defeat.

“I didn’t want anyone to know that I was there because I wasn’t supposed to be working that day.”

“And? Couldn’t you have just been calling in to collect something?”

“No. There were people on the unit who…”

“Who knew about your drug problems?”

“Yes. They would have seen me there and thought I was there to score.”

“Were you?”

Cooke stared at Craig and then shrugged. “Yes, but not from the ward stock. Ellie was bringing me in some coke. I’d arranged to meet her to collect it.”

“Where?”

“In the linen room. There are no cameras in there or in the area outside. I broke some of the other unit cameras so I could get in and out without being seen. We met there around ten on Thursday morning.”

“Why were you still around at eleven when Hannah Donard found the body and screamed?”

“I was in the sluice off my face.”

Craig nodded. It fitted Cooke arriving at the linen room immediately after Donard had screamed and Davy not finding images of Cooke anywhere on the unit that day. Jake had confirmed that no-one they’d re-interviewed had seen Cooke either. If they looked at CCTV elsewhere in the hospital they might see him sneaking in or out, but his money was on Cooke wearing a hoodie to hide his face.

Cooke continued. “Hazel Gormley and some of the other staff knew that I had a drug problem, but they thought it was in the past…”

Craig interrupted. “Didn’t they ever report you to the GMC?”

Cooke shuddered. “Thankfully no.” His tone became defensive. “ I’m still a good doctor, you know.” He paused as if waiting for an argument, restarting when none came. “Anyway, like I said, some people knew and they might have put two and two together if they’d seen me there on a day off, then both Ellie and I would have lost our jobs.”

“Better than her losing her life.”

The way Cooke’s face fell reinforced Craig’s view that he hadn’t helped Eleanor Rudd to her death. He pressed his advantage before Cooke dried up.

“What about Professor Taylor?”

Cooke gazed at him curiously. “What about him? He isn’t a user as far as I know.”

“Thanks for the opinion but I wasn’t talking about drugs. I meant what about him and Nurse Rudd?”

Cooke shrugged. “He still fancied her, even though he was married.”

“Who left who?”

Craig already knew the answer but he wanted to hear it confirmed.

“Ellie left him. She said Taylor wasn’t happy about it. Ellie was a beautiful girl and she knew how to use it, if you know what I mean?”

Craig knew exactly what he meant but he had no intention of being vulgar about the dead. He needed answers from what was likely to be their last interview; the Drug Squad would take over Cooke’s case now.

“Was Taylor obsessed with Nurse Rudd?”

Cooke smiled as if remembering something. “You could say that. He tailed us one night last year when we left the ward. Sad git. We were in Bar Red and we saw him watching us from the street.”

“Obsessed enough to kill her?”

Craig watched as the junior doctor calculated whether to incriminate his boss by lying, or to tell the truth. He plumped for the latter.

“Nah. Taylor’s too much of a wimp. I can see him stealing her underwear and stalking her, but he’d never have the balls to kill someone.”

“You say that as if you admire murder.”

“Not really. I wouldn’t have the balls either.”

Craig thought for a moment and then glanced at the clock. It was after three o’clock; time to wrap up. He straightened his papers and recited the charges in a bored voice, ending with.

“Detective Sergeant Rimmins has more questions to ask you. I suggest you be as cooperative as possible; it will help your case. You’ll be bailed and your solicitor will advise you how to proceed with regards to your defence and employment.”

He left the room quickly and joined Liam in the viewing room, phoning Jake to release Abigail McIvor with a warning that they might need to speak to her again. “I want someone tailing Cooke when he’s bailed. One of the team that he hasn’t met.”

Liam thought for a moment. “McGregor? He’s less likely to suspect a woman.”

“Good. If Cooke’s going to search for Rudd’s Black Book then he’ll do it quickly. He won’t want us finding it first in case it undermines whatever lies he’s just told.”

“Fine. I’ll get Jack to hold him until after the briefing so McGregor has time to catch him up.” He gestured through the glass. “What do you reckon? Did he kill Rudd?”

Craig shook his head. “My gut says no. Taylor as well. Cooke’s right, Taylor would never have the balls.”

Liam nodded. “A stalker not a fighter.” He shot Craig an admiring look. “Here, that bluff about Rudd being a coke dealer was tasty, boss.”

“It wasn’t a bluff. I had a hunch. There was something about Ellie Rudd that made someone want to kill her. OK, so she wasn’t particularly nice, but that wasn’t enough. We found no sign of anyone being blackmailed by her and she wasn’t robbed or raped, so if it wasn’t love and jealousy by either Taylor or Cooke, then with Cooke involved what other possible reason did that leave but drugs?”

“She might have been a real cow to someone?”

Craig laughed quietly, so as not to break Karl’s flow; he had Adrian Cooke on the ropes.

“She might have been but that’s hardly motive for murder, is it?”

Liam shook his head. “I don’t know. Some of the women I…”

Craig cut across him. “You know murder needs a motive that makes sense, even if only to the killer. Love, sex, revenge, theft of something valuable…”

“You think Rudd was killed because someone wanted her stash of coke?”

Craig shrugged. “They left her cash behind so it doesn’t look like theft but maybe they took some coke or her customer book, or perhaps someone wanted revenge for something that she’d done.”

Liam thought as Craig motioned him from the room and into the car park.

“So, if Rudd was dealing but no stash was found on her that could mean the killer nicked it.”

“Or she only brought enough coke with her that day for Dr Cooke. Cooke’s the only addict we know about and he wouldn’t have killed her for a small amount, especially if he’s been buying from her for years.”

They climbed into Craig’s car and he pulled out smoothly onto High Street, heading for the C.C.U.

“Unless Cooke’s a dealer as well and he wanted her book to cover the fact.”

Craig nodded. “Unless he’s a dealer as well. But my money’s still on Rudd being killed in revenge for something she did. Something drug related.”

“So…someone whose relative she turned into an addict?”

“Or an addict themselves…”

They postulated until they’d reached the C.C.U. car park.

“This is all just speculation. We need that book and we need Davy’s background checks into everyone on the ward before we can even start to narrow it down.”

Chapter Six

Reilly Suite. 3 p.m.

Movie stereotypes aren’t real. They’re caricatures created by a writer, based on the foibles of people they’ve met, or seen on some TV show. Irish movie stereotypes are even more extreme; either tweedely-deeing their way across the screen, unfailingly cheerful despite living in a ramshackle cottage with a leaky thatched roof and pigs running across the kitchen floor, or dark-haired, dark-eyed handsome men who meet in bars and alleys to plan the quasi-patriotic destruction of their own land. All with a grain of truth but none of them actually real.

Annette and Ken both knew that. They were intelligent, worldly people who’d spent hours in darkened cinemas watching movies, or in their own living rooms watching a DVD. So they knew that Ferdy Myers had to be putting it on; fulfilling his stereotyped role as the eccentric hospital porter, so that even the strangest patient wouldn’t feel alienated and the clinical staff could feel that all was well in ‘hospital world’.

His battered boots and baggy trousers pulled tight around his middle, and his too-small porter’s coat, were for the ‘tourists’. Just like his thick glasses, rough Aran jumper and the poorly kept teeth in his wild-haired head. Myers was good at the role, muttering into his chest when he was asked a question and then throwing his head back suddenly and breaking into rhyme. Even Annette was impressed with how enthusiastically he inhabited the part – Stanislavski would have been proud. But Ferdinand Myers was acting and she was determined to break through his front.

Forty minutes and endless questions later Annette gave up and headed to Newman’s nurses’ station, leaving Ken with their guest. A student nurse not much older than her daughter sat there, filling in a form with a diligence that suggested her life relied upon it.

“Is Sister Norton around?”

The girl glanced up, startled by the voice, even though Annette had clicked noisily towards her down the ward. After a second she shook her head and pointed towards a small office with blurred words on its door. Annette hated wearing her glasses; glasses made people look old even when they weren’t, so instead she squinted until ‘Sister J Norton’ crystallised. A knock and a light “come in” permitted her entrance.

“Sister?”

Jane Norton glanced up; it lengthened to a gaze when she saw it was the police.

“Can I help you, officer?”

Annette took the words as an invitation to sit.

“I’d like to ask about your ward porter, Mr Myers.”

Jane Norton’s slim face broke into a smile. “Let me guess. Ferdy’s muttering and breaking off at a tangent when you ask him anything, and you think he’s being obstructive?”

Annette nodded eagerly. “Yes. Is he?”

Norton smiled again. “Welcome to my world. Ferdy’s barely said a straight word in the five years that I’ve known him.”

Annette shook her head. ”How do you work with him?”

“He does his job and the patients love him.” She set down her pen and stared past Annette as if recalling something. “Ferdy joined us five years ago straight out of a psychiatric unit. The government closed a lot of the big hospitals and placed the people who they thought could cope in the community. Ferdy’d been in there for ten years, since he’d left the army on mental health grounds. PTSD; too much conflict.”

Annette nodded; a lot of military veterans had problems coping with what they’d seen. The sister was still talking.

“He’s not insane if that’s what you’re thinking, he’s as normal as you and me. He just puts on an act to stop people asking what happened to him. When he first joined us he wouldn’t speak to anyone but me; he’d had a good relationship with the sister on his hospital ward. Gradually he began to relax and a really chirpy personality came out. The patients love him, he talks about Star Trek or sings when he’s taking them places and it really cheers them up.”

“Where does he live now?”

“A community psychiatric house on the Demesne Estate.”

“What will happen when he retires? He’s in his fifties now.”

Norton shook her head. “He never will. We’re his family. Besides, he does the work of three younger men without complaining, so I doubt the management would ever let him go.” She gave Annette a knowing smile. “Proving hard to get a statement from, is he?”

Annette laughed. “Impossible. But I know the words of ‘The Wild Rover’ now.”

Norton walked past her to the door. “I’ll come and help. He’ll answer you when I’m there and whatever he tells you will be true. Ferdy can be sharp as a tack when he wants to be, he just doesn’t bother usually. But you’ll only get one shot at your questions and then he’ll get bored, whether I’m there or not.”

Ten minutes later they had their statement. Ferdinand Myers had replenished the linen room from the main laundry at seven a.m. on the day of Ellie Rudd’s death. He hadn’t been near the room after that, so whoever had pulled out the linen trolley it hadn’t been him. Where had he been between seven and eleven o’clock that morning? Helping with the breakfasts and then taking a patient from Reilly to the hydrotherapy pool and waiting to bring them back. He’d gone off at eleven for a break because he’d been on since six a.m.

Annette bade the porter and sister goodbye and beckoned Ken to join her for coffee in the canteen. Ferdy Myers had been the sole porter on the E.M.U. that day and he’d seen nothing out of place – no strangers, no-one wandering where they shouldn’t. They’d asked about the area round the linen room especially, but Myers hadn’t seen anyone entering or leaving when he was there and at the time of Rudd’s death he’d been at physiotherapy. As Annette bit into a low calorie crisp-bread trying to imagine it was a cream cake, she realised that whoever had killed Eleanor Rudd might have to kill again for them to get any clues.

***

Stranmillis Station.

Jake had let Abigail McIvor stew then on Craig’s call he’d put the fear of God into her and let her go. Dopey woman, prepared to destroy the career she’d worked so hard for by giving a false alibi to some man she barely knew, just because she ‘loved’ him. In Jake’s book there was love and then there was complete stupidity.