Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation (17 page)

Lapslie smiled. ‘I tell you what – let’s go and do some real investigating,’ he offered. ‘Let’s go to Chelmsford Hospital and see if we can identify that girl.’

‘What makes you think that someone at the hospital can identify her?’

‘I’m guessing she was there for a reason. Maybe she was an outpatient; maybe she was visiting a friend or a relative. Either way, someone in that hospital will recognise her photograph.’

Emma nodded. ‘Okay, I’m up for it. Let’s go “off-island”.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Off-island?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘I’ll drive, and I’ll drop you back here when we’ve finished. And on the way I’ll tell you about the conversation that Dom McGinley and I had earlier on today.’

Her heart sank. They’d been talking. She needed to score some points quickly, otherwise he’d be overbearing for the whole journey. ‘Okay. Will I get to meet your new girlfriend, if she’s on duty?’

‘Not a chance.’ He scowled at her. ‘How did you know about her?’

‘Dom told me,’ she said, feeling like she’d evened the score in advance.

The drive to Chelmsford Hospital took about forty minutes, and despite Lapslie’s threat he actually said almost nothing about meeting Dom, apart from the fact that Dom had tracked him down in a noodle bar. That in itself surprised Emma more than anything else – the fact that Lapslie had willingly spent time by himself in a restaurant. Things really were changing.

Lapslie swung his car into the hospital car park and prowled the lanes until he found a particular slot, passing several other vacant slots on the way. Emma got the impression that he was a regular there, and had fallen into habits. She followed him in through the main entrance. He looked around for a moment, then went up to the woman on the reception desk. She flinched when she saw him. They obviously had a history together, and it wasn’t a good one.

‘I’m trying to identify this girl,’ he said, fishing an A4 sheet of printed paper from his jacket pocket and unfolding it. ‘Have you seen her around this hospital?’

The woman took the photo from Lapslie as if it, or he, might bite. She scanned it and then handed it back. ‘We get all sorts of girls like that coming in here,’ she said dismissively. ‘On Friday and Saturday nights it’s because they’ve drunk so much they’re suffering from alcohol poisoning. On Saturday and Sunday mornings it’s because they ended up in the wrong bed
and need to get hold of a morning-after pill. The rest of the week they’re just visiting some pregnant schoolfriend in the maternity unit.’

‘You have even more of a twisted and cynical view of life than I do,’ Lapslie said admiringly. ‘I might even pay for my own parking this time.’

Emma followed him towards the lifts, feeling the woman’s heated gaze on the back of her neck. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked as the lift travelled upwards. It was large enough to hold twenty people, or perhaps just five people and a large hospital bed being wheeled from ward to X-ray or back again.

‘Paediatrics. Assuming she’s a patient and not a visitor, the girl is probably too young to be on an adult ward. Someone in the paediatric ward might know who she is. She might even still be there herself.’

Emma checked her watch. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘Yes, but patients don’t generally go home at night, and they’ll all be in the ward getting ready for bed. We can check them all out while they’re vulnerable.’

‘They’re patients in hospital,’ she protested. ‘They live in their pyjamas and dressing gowns.’

‘While they’re
more
vulnerable,’ he corrected himself. ‘And besides, the nurses on at the moment will be the same ones who were on during the last set of visiting hours. They might well remember the girl in the photo.’

In point of fact, they didn’t. Emma spent half an hour with Lapslie in the paediatrics ward, twenty-five minutes of which were spent persuading the sister in charge that they weren’t suspicious characters trying to get close to vulnerable children. The place made her edgy. The sound of several children sobbing themselves to sleep drifted through the ward, and the oversized cut-outs of cartoon characters stuck to the walls and the room
dividers that presumably looked cute and friendly in daylight were ominous black shadows at night. The nurses in their white uniforms moved silently, like ghosts, between the beds. It could almost have been deliberately designed to give kids nightmares. The sister eventually told Lapslie pointedly that the girl in the photo wasn’t a patient now, had never been a patient for as long as the sister had been working at the hospital, and was not a recent visitor either.

Lapslie managed to get them a good look at most of the beds as they left by deliberately wandering down the ward pretending that he couldn’t remember the way out, but there was no sign of the girl. Or, at least, if she were there, and if the sister were either mistaken or lying, then she was hidden beneath the covers.

‘So, what now?’ Emma asked as they left.

Lapslie rubbed his chin. ‘Short of stopping people at random and asking them whether they’ve seen this girl, or copying the photo and plastering it on every notice-board in sight with a message asking people to phone us if they’ve seen her, I’m at something of a loss.’

‘Anyone you know here you could ask? Your girlfriend, for instance?’

Lapslie smiled. ‘Nice try, but you’re still not going to meet her.’ He frowned. ‘Actually, I’m still under the care of a psychiatrist here – Doctor Garland. I could ask his advice.’ Catching her raised eyebrow, he added, ‘It’s nothing suspicious. I’m not having a nervous breakdown. It’s just that synaesthesia, being a neurological condition, shades across into the area of psychology. Doctor Garland is running the support group that I attend.’

‘Will he still be working this late?’

‘As I’ve found out,’ Lapslie said ruefully, ‘doctors are like policemen – they don’t stick to a regular nine-to-five working
day. They stay until the job’s done – or later, if they’re committed to finding an answer.’

Lapslie led Emma back to the lifts, and up to a different floor, then across a bridge between buildings and along a wide spine corridor until they came to a side corridor marked ‘Neurology’. He pushed the swing doors open and entered the darkened corridor. Light spilled from the open door of an office at the far end.

‘I think he’s in,’ Lapslie said, sounding pleased.

He led the way down the corridor and stopped in the open doorway. ‘Doctor Garland,’ he said, ‘may I interrupt?’

Emma joined him just as a burly, middle-aged man with a handlebar moustache rose from his chair. ‘Mr Lapslie,’ he said. ‘Surprised to see you. Didn’t know we had an appointment.’ He glanced at Emma, and smiled. ‘Alan Garland,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘Emma Bradbury,’ she replied, shaking it. ‘I’m the sergeant to his detective chief inspector.’

‘Not a standard police relationship, surely,’ Garland said. His grip was warm and firm. ‘There’s at least one level in between those two. Shouldn’t you have an inspector hanging around somewhere?’

‘He’s never followed the normal rules,’ Emma said, nodding her head towards Lapslie.

‘Actually,’ Garland said, ‘it’s not so unusual. I used to be in the Army. Lieutenant-Colonel. My Staff Officer was a captain – two ranks down.’

‘You used to be in the Army?’ Lapslie said, apparently amazed.

‘Left ten years ago. Royal Army Medical Corps. Qualified psychiatrist, even then. Specialised in combat stress reaction, acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.’

‘How reassuring,’ Lapslie said, obviously taken aback.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Garland said, obviously enjoying the reaction. ‘I know everything about your history, but you know hardly anything about mine.’

Emma decided that she liked Doctor Garland. He had a friendly bonhomie about him, an old-fashioned, old-world approach to life. If anyone was going to help Lapslie, it would be him.

‘I need your help,’ Lapslie said, chiming strangely with Emma’s thought processes.

‘Medical or criminal?’

‘Criminal.’

‘I’m not well up on forensic pathology.’

‘That’s okay,’ Lapslie said, glancing at Emma and wincing. ‘We’ve had bad experiences with forensic pathologists. No, it’s more a case of you recognising a photograph of a suspect who we know has been present at this hospital.’

‘Lot of people pass through reception every day,’ Garland pointed out. ‘I don’t see more than a handful of them.’

‘But you know me,’ Lapslie pointed out, ‘and that may make a difference.’

‘Delusions of grandeur?’ Garland asked, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Fascinating.’

Lapslie shook his head. ‘Don’t get so excited. I actually have reasons to believe that I am being singled out by the murderer for special attention.’

‘And a former patient of mine who swore blind that he was the secret ruler of the Earth, sent here from Jupiter to save us from destruction, had reasons to believe that as well. Spurious, of course, but he believed them.’

Lapslie glanced at Emma. ‘You tell him,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m getting nowhere.’

‘You’re a patient,’ Emma said calmly. ‘I’m not.’ She smiled at Garland. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Lapslie here was sent a sound
file attached to an email. The sound file was—’ She hesitated, glancing at Lapslie, and when he nodded she continued – ‘a recording of a murder. The email was sent from the internet café attached to this hospital. We have a recorded image of the person we believe sent the email. It’s a young female suspect, and we’re trying to identify her.’

Garland raised an eyebrow and glanced from Emma to Lapslie and back. ‘The email was sent to you personally? So you’re a target. Murderer wants you to know that they know you. Or the email wasn’t sent by the murderer, but someone who knows about the crime and wants you to investigate it.’

Lapslie nodded. ‘That about covers it. I’m not delusional. This person, whoever it is, really has me in their sights.’

‘Can I see the photo?’

Lapslie handed the folded A4 sheet across to Garland. He unfolded it, and although his expression didn’t change from professional detachment crossed with aloof amusement, the atmosphere in the neurology department suddenly changed. A chill wind blew across Emma’s neck, and she wasn’t sure whether it was a premonition or a product of the air conditioning.

‘This is her?’ Garland said carefully.

‘Yes,’ Lapslie replied. ‘Have you seen her around the hospital?’

‘I have,’ Garland replied levelly. ‘I don’t think I’m breaking any confidentiality agreements by telling you that she’s the daughter of that new chap in your workshop – Stephen Stottart.’

The family interview room in Chelmsford Police HQ was decorated in the same pastel colours as the paediatrics unit at the nearby hospital, with the same table in the corner with a wireframe toy where children could run beads along coloured wires which wound and spiralled around each other. The paint on the walls had dulled over the years and there were scuff marks at exactly the height where a five-year-old would run a toy car around the room. The ghost of a smell of spoiled milk and full nappies hung in the air. Like all the similar units Lapslie had seen over the years, it was depressing rather than relaxing. Or perhaps that was just because of the pain and misery that had been absorbed by the furnishings and the plaster and the paint; the tales of abuse by family, by babysitters, by teachers, by priests and vicars; by anyone, in fact, in a position of authority. The media often fulminated about sexual abuse being rife in some institution or another; in fact, it had nothing to do with institutions. It occurred everywhere that grown men had power over youngsters. There was something fundamentally wrong about the male brain, about the way sexual satisfaction and power were so often squashed together; something that had presumably grown as an unwanted by-product of human tribal evolution and now hung around like an appendix, ready to become sick and inflamed at the slightest notice. Most men had a mental cut-out that stopped them thinking
and therefore acting inappropriately. Most men. But Lapslie, by nature of his job, tended to meet more than his fair share of men who didn’t possess that cut-out.

Like most policemen, Lapslie firmly believed that paedophilic tendencies couldn’t be treated with drugs or counselling. Cognitive behavioural therapy wouldn’t work, and neither would neuro-linguistic programming. No fashionable psychological intervention was going to make a difference. Paedophiles were built that way because humans were built that way; it’s just that the little mental fuse box that most people had that stopped them from finding small kids and relatives sexually attractive had blown, and there was no replacing it short of going in through the skull and doing some radical brain surgery. With a screwdriver.

The door to the family interview room opened, and a female police constable walked in: ‘They’re here,’ she announced. ‘Shall I send them in?’

‘Please,’ Lapslie said. ‘And send DS Bradbury in as well.’

She left, and the door swung to behind her.

Lapslie was sitting in a comfortable chair, his paperwork and notes balanced precariously on his knees. He felt like a fool. He would far rather be sitting behind a desk, separated from the person he was questioning by a solid barrier.

But wasn’t that just emphasising his position of authority? Wasn’t that just a step along the road that led to domination, and then abuse?

Best not to think about it too much.

A video camera had been set up on a tripod in a corner of the room. Lapslie had the remote control balanced on his knee along with his paperwork, and he carefully pressed the ‘Start’ button to initiate the recording. His notes nearly slipped off his knees, but he caught them before they could hit the floor.

The door opened again, and Stephen Stottart entered, his daughter behind him. He was holding her hand. She was shorter than she looked in the video image from the internet café in the hospital. She was wearing some kind of woollen hat, and corkscrew curls of red hair were tumbling out from beneath it. They were both looking wide-eyed and confused.