The Burden of Doubt (5 page)

Sylvia lifted her head and permitted herself a tiny, regretful smile. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She looked across at Laura. ‘I’m aware of the things the police want to know when conducting a murder enquiry,’ she said, her voice thin and shaky. ‘So before you put me through the embarrassment of asking the vital question of where I was when Moira died, I’d like to say that I was at home all that morning. On my own. My housekeeper didn’t arrive until eleven-thirty as she got held up because of the snow and ice.’

‘Thank you for that,’ Laura said, writing down Sylvia Farrell’s formal words in her notebook.

‘Jayne was in Prague when Moira died,’ Sylvia continued, her voice shaky with emotion. ‘She came back immediately I called her.’

Laura turned to Jayne, who nodded agreement.

‘Now, is that all, Constable?’ Sylvia demanded, her self-control restored.

‘Almost, Mrs Farrell.’ Laura cleared her throat. ‘Would you describe Moira’s marriage as happy?’

Sylvia and her daughter exchanged glances. ‘I have no reason to believe they were unhappy,’ Sylvia Farrell said, formally. ‘Moira certainly never mentioned it.’

In the ensuing silence the air within the room seemed to gather itself together into a sigh of regret. Sylvia linked her hands together and laid them on her lap. It was a gesture which indicated that the interview was at a close.

Jayne got up and politely escorted Laura to the outer door, having carefully closed the door of the living-room behind them.

‘This has been a terrible shock for my mother,’ Jayne told Laura,
as they stood on the outer steps. ‘Especially as I was away at the time. Of course, I came back as soon as she telephoned me with the news. But that’s not the same as being here.’

Laura nodded in respectful agreement.

‘She’s had more than her fair share of sudden death,’ Jayne continued. ‘Her first husband, my father, died of a stroke in his sleep. And Anthony, my stepfather, died of a heart attack whilst playing billiards at his club. Neither of them had suffered any previous illness, so the shock was terrible. And now, Moira …’

Laura left a respectful pause. ‘Were you and Moira close?’ she asked.

Jayne considered. ‘Not really. I mean we got on perfectly well when we met at family functions. But there was quite an age difference between us and we didn’t really socialize together. Moira was wrapped up in her work and with Rajesh – and the whole medical scene; she was a dedicated, caring medic.’ She paused.

‘And you?’ Laura prompted.

‘Ah, well, I guess I’m a bit of a lightweight. I got a big legacy from my grandparents on my father’s side and basically I don’t have to work. I entertain myself going to music concerts around Britain and Europe and to teaching the clarinet to a few handpicked pupils who show genuine promise.’

Laura found herself warming to the other woman’s frankness and her air of gentle self mockery. She felt no envy of those rich enough not to work. She would have chosen to join the police even if she’d had millions. Well, she was pretty sure she would.

‘I had the impression your mother was holding back on her opinion of Professor Patel,’ Laura suggested.

Jayne inclined her head in agreement. ‘Rajesh is not an especially easy person socially, he’s very talented, and not very much interested in socializing. And he’s very much his own person. He doesn’t show his feelings or share them with anyone. He and Moira’s father didn’t really hit it off at all as Anthony was just the opposite.’

‘And your mother? Did he get on with her?’

‘No, not really. But she wouldn’t ever admit it. My mother’s
proud, you see – one of the old school. She likes to show a good front. And she believes that our family should share vital information, that we shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing to aim for.’ She glanced at Laura to gauge her reaction, then stepped back into the hallway and opened the squashy leather bag sitting on a chair beside the door. She took out a small white business card and handed it to Laura. ‘My contact details. Please get in touch if there’s anything else you’d like to ask about.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’d rather you spoke to me than my mother. You understand, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Laura said, whilst privately reflecting that at this early stage in this investigation it would be presumptuous to think one understood very much at all.

Feeling that the interview hadn’t gone too badly on the whole, Laura slotted herself behind the wheel of her elderly Mini and headed back to the station. On the way she stopped at a corner shop and treated herself to a Snickers bar and a fizzy drink packed with sugar. Sliding behind her desk in the incident room she tossed her notebook on the desktop, logged on to the computer, took a sip of her fizzy drink and then unwrapped her chocolate bar with a sigh of anticipation. Before taking a bite she leaned back in her chair letting her mind re-run through the minutes she had spent with Sylvia Farrell and her daughter.

‘So, what’s our little Highland lassie been up to?’ Doug had stolen up behind her and was whispering into her ear. He came trailing the bleak cold of the January day, frozen rain glistening on the shoulders of his coat. He shrugged it off, shook it and tossed it on the back of a chair.

Laura straightened herself into a more professional position.

‘Hey, I’m not anyone’s little anyone,’ she responded merrily, ‘and I’m from Glasgow.’ She ran a hand through the back of her hair, her fingers rustling through the mass of pale-brown strands and making them stand out from her scalp in a messy shiny tangle.

‘Where the good townsfolk like to commit dental suicide,’ Doug teased, eyeing her chocolate bar before picking up the discarded wrapper crumpled on the desk and lobbing it with
commendable accuracy into a bin some feet away. ‘So how did things go with the victim’s parents?’

‘OK, I suppose. Both Moira’s natural parents are dead.’

‘So who was left for you to speak to?’

‘A stepmother and a stepsister. Her only brother is in the US.’

‘Could be some family intrigue there, then – with the
step-contingent
.’

‘Possibly. The stepmother was obviously shocked, but not grief stricken as far as I could tell.’

‘And the stepsister?’

‘The same really. She was in Prague at the time of the murder, but the stepmother was at her own house. And she’s readily admitting to being without an alibi.’

‘Fair enough,’ Doug commented. ‘But don’t you forget to check the airline records for the sister, that’ll be the first thing the boss will try to trip you up with.’

Laura glanced at him.

‘Not the DCI,’ Doug said, grinning. ‘Our new super. I get the feeling he hasn’t got to the high pinnacle he’s sitting on by being kind and gentle to his troops.’

‘Yeah.’ Laura smiled agreement.

‘So you just take my advice,’ Doug remarked, his smile holding a trace of fatherliness. ‘Dot all your Is and cross all your Ts.’

‘Yep.’ She gave a smug little smile. ‘I’ve already done my checking.’

‘Good for you! Any joy?’

‘She was booked on a flight back from Prague, January 19th. She cancelled that and booked for a late afternoon flight on the 16th, the day of Moira’s killing.’

‘No excitement there then.’ Doug picked up a piece of A4 paper lying on the desk, folded it into the shape of a dart and lobbed it at the whiteboard. ‘I drove the boss back from the press conference,’ he told Laura. ‘Apparently one of the up and coming young journalists there suggested all was not well with staff relationships in Moira Farrell’s team at the hospital.’

‘Oh!’ Laura’s eyes gleamed.

‘Yeah. I’ve just been to the hospital to follow up. Two of Moira
Farrell’s closest colleagues were in theatre dealing with a caesarean, and the sister-in-charge was nowhere to be found.’

‘Probably on the fire escape having a quick fag,’ Laura said.

‘Waste of a trip. Not to worry, I’ll just have to go back in an hour or so.’

‘You’re disappointing me, Doug. I’d been counting on you to come back from your travels with a brilliant lead.’

Doug eyed her dolefully. ‘I’ve done nothing more than make my poor feet throb with frozen misery trudging around in the slush. We haven’t had weather like this in years – aren’t we supposed to be in a global warming situation? My poor old bones ache with cold. I think I’m getting past all this legwork.’

‘Oh, come on, you’re as fit as a flea,’ Laura said, smiling.

‘Fit to drop,’ Doug countered. ‘I’ve been all round the town checking out folks who delivered to the Farrells’ household. Professor Patel drew up a list as long as your arm. They’ve had major work done in the house recently – plasterers, plumbers, joiners, decorators – you name it.’

‘So, anything of interest?’

‘I did get two pairs of trainers which could have some correspondence to the size of the prints SOCOs found at the scene. I’ve taken them round to forensics which must be a prime example of a triumph of hope over experience – what murderer is going to go to work in the same footgear he had on when he did the deed? The two guys concerned both said they could provide alibis from girlfriends and neighbours if necessary.’

Laura put on a suitably sympathetic and resigned expression.

Doug smiled, gave a shrug then picked up his wet coat and draped it over a radiator. ‘Oh!’ he said, remembering. ‘We’ve got a name and address for the number that came up on Moira’s mobile. A Dr Serena Fox. Seems like she’s some sort of shrink. The boss’ll no doubt want her checked out ASAP.’

‘Well, well.’ Laura slithered a pencil back and forwards through supple moving fingers. ‘So – Moira’s father was a professor at Sheffield Medical School,’ she mused. ‘And her husband Patel is a Professor of Orthopaedics at Leeds Medical School. And she was a consultant anaesthetist working in the gynaecological
department
.
And she has a friend who’s a shrink. All high-powered medics.’

‘And?’

‘So, it’s interesting,’ Laura said. ‘Murder and medicine.’

Doug headed off towards the coffee machine, shaking his head in despair.

Tanya Blake was peeling off her bloodstained gloves as Swift entered the morgue. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘The press conference went on longer than I’d thought.’

She dropped the gloves in a plastic-lined bin. ‘I knew you’d get held up, so I went ahead anyway. And the most grisly bits are over.’

‘I can’t pretend to be sorry about that,’ Swift admitted.

Tanya had covered the body with a green cloth, leaving just the victim’s head showing. She herself, being tiny and slender, was almost swamped in the standard issue green overalls. He noticed a row of four tiny silver studs glinting in her right earlobe. In the left was a single shining star. Just enough to mark her out as on the edge of unconventional.

She gave him a reassuring smile, sympathetic in the knowledge that attendance at the post-mortem scene was not one of his favourite tasks. ‘I thought it would be useful for you to have the main findings right away. It might be a little while before I get the chance to file a written report.’

‘Right.’ Swift was looking at the dead woman’s face. Cleaned up and laid on the slab, she looked strangely at peace, and strikingly beautiful; her thick black hair framing the whiteness of her face.

Blake followed his glance. ‘It seems such a waste, doesn’t it?’ she murmured reflectively.

‘The loss of life at a comparatively early age?’

‘That certainly.’ She laid a hand on the dead woman’s cold forehead, gently touched her waxen eyelids. ‘But think of the loss of all that vitality: the shutting down of a body which was working perfectly. She was a fit and healthy woman: her physiology and biochemistry were all in excellent working order. And all of that has gone.’ Blake looked thoughtful for few moments before snapping back into crisp professional mode, tapping her notes with the tip of her pen.

‘OK,’ she began. ‘Moira Farrell was a healthy woman in her early forties. The cause of death was a single blow to the carotid artery. She would have died almost instantly. There are no defence wounds, suggesting that she was surprised by the attack, didn’t see it coming – both in the literal and metaphorical sense.’

‘An attacker she knew and trusted, perhaps?’ Swift said.

‘Possibly.’

‘And someone who knew what they were doing. A fellow medic?’

Blake nodded. ‘Unless it was a lucky strike as I mentioned before.’

‘She was still in her nightclothes, which we’ve bagged up and will be sending on for forensic examination.’ She pointed to a nearby table on which was laid an evidence bag containing bloodstained clothing. ‘A cotton nightdress and a chenille dressing-gown. No underwear. Pink leather ballet pumps on her feet.’

Swift glanced obediently at the contents of the bag then moved his gaze back to Blake.

‘There were no signs of sexual assault. Nor of any recent sexual activity.’ Blake drew a folded sheet from the front of her notebook, and opened it out. ‘I sent a blood sample to the lab yesterday evening. This is the report they came up with. It tells us that she had no diseases or abnormal conditions. There was no alcohol in the blood, nor any signs of drugs.’

‘A commendably clean bill of health,’ Swift commented drily.

‘You could say that. And I can also confirm that she was pregnant – around twelve weeks.’

Swift suppressed a sigh.

‘With twins. I’ve asked for a DNA analysis on the foetuses.’

There was a pause.

Twins, Swift thought – a double loss. It then came to him that Professor Patel had made no mention his wife’s pregnancy. So why not?

Back at the station he gave the two members of his team present a brief account of what he had learned at the post-mortem, then requested that Laura should accompany him to interview Patel once more.

‘It’s a sex thing,’ Swift told Doug, as Laura sprang up with enthusiasm and wound a scarf around her neck. ‘Nothing personal.’

Doug glanced out of the window at the heavy, lowered sky. ‘Don’t you worry, boss, I’m only too happy to stay in the warmth and put my feet up.’ He glanced at his notebook which was crammed with jottings waiting to be keyed in to his computer. ‘Metaphorically speaking, of course.’

Patel was in a small office at the end of long echoing corridor. He was sitting at his desk, the top of which was almost completely clear apart from a telephone and a plastic funnel containing pens and pencils. Rows of shelves ran around the four walls of the room, each of them filled with medical texts.

It was clear that he was not in a fit state to do any work requiring steady concentration. He had the air of a man who had simply been sitting, absorbed in his own thoughts and misery for the past few hours. Without getting to his feet, he gestured to Swift and Laura to sit down.

‘Professor Patel,’ Swift said evenly, ‘why didn’t you tell us that your wife was pregnant?’

Patel’s head sank down slowly as though his neck could no longer support it. It was like watching a prisoner in the dock receiving a life sentence. The kind of prisoner who had no fight left in him, who was totally resigned, bowing his head to fate. The two detectives watched him, putting their natural human sympathy to one side and making a professional assessment. Either Patel was a very good actor, or Moira hadn’t told him anything.

Whatever the case, clarification was needed. ‘Did you know Moira was pregnant?’ Laura asked.

Patel rested his forehead on his spread fingers. ‘No.’ His voice broke up in his throat.

‘She must have known, though,’ Laura pointed out gently. ‘She was a doctor, she of all people must have known.’

‘Yes,’ Patel agreed.

Laura shot Swift a glance.

‘Would you like us to leave, sir?’ Swift asked the stricken man. ‘We could talk further later.’

‘No.’ His voice sounded as if it was struggling through the slush lying on the pavements outside. ‘Let’s do it now. Get it over.’

‘What is it you want to tell us?’ Swift asked gently, watching Patel carefully and following his own intuition.

‘Moira and I had been wanting children for several years. She became pregnant three years ago and we were overjoyed. She miscarried at twelve weeks. The same thing happened six months later. And then a year after that.’

‘Did she have treatment?’ Laura asked.

‘Of course. We went to an ex-colleague of mine in Harley Street.’

‘And you kept trying – for a baby?’

‘Yes.’ Patel removed his head from his fingers and raised it slightly. ‘We had sex at the appropriate times.’

Laura felt a raw prickle down her spine. It didn’t sound as though the marriage had been too good, certainly not in the bedroom. Her thoughts veered back to the electric excitement of the touch of Saul’s lips on hers – a man about whom she knew virtually nothing. She took in a breath and pulled herself back to the present.

‘How advanced was the pregnancy?’ Patel was asking, speaking slowly and carefully as though afraid his voice might let him down at any moment.

‘Twelve weeks.’ Laura could see the pain in the man’s eyes, the hopeless misery. She was on the point of reassuring him, offering an explanation on the lines of Moira’s being hesitant or suspicious about sharing the good the news until she was well past the
danger point of a further miscarriage. She reminded herself that she was a detective constable. That what was required was some comment from Patel himself regarding Moira’s reason for secrecy. Patel’s silence grew.

‘She was expecting twins, sir,’ Laura said.

Patel closed his eyes for a few seconds.

Glancing at Swift Laura noted that he was still waiting patiently for Patel to speak. When the bereaved man turned his head slightly and sank into gloomy retrospection, Swift got to his feet. Quietly and respectfully, the two officers left Patel to his inner torment.

‘Poor guy,’ Laura said, as they walked away from the bereaved man’s office and its heavily charged atmosphere of tragedy.

Swift nodded agreement. ‘And, of course, we’ll need to grill him further about this pregnancy,’ Swift said, ‘and why she kept it from him.’

‘Not Patel’s baby?’ Laura suggested.

‘Well, that’s the obvious issue to get to grips with.’

‘Who might she have confided in?’

‘Who would you have confided in?’

Laura considered. ‘I’m single. She was married. Patel was the obvious one, or the boyfriend.’

‘How about your mother?’

Laura’s eyes went wide with horror. ‘God, no!’

‘Let’s go for the boyfriend theory, then. Maybe it was a colleague.’

Laura grimaced. ‘Sounds a bit like incest. But yes, a line to follow.’ Privately her mind had begun to fill with the whole issue of pregnancy, and the notion that she could be pregnant herself. Dear God! It was now way too late for any thought of the morning after pill. She’d call at a chemist at the first opportunity and get a pregnancy testing kit. How long before the test was valid? A week? Two? She really had no idea. She had never put herself at risk before. Her palms felt clammy with foreboding.

Patel sat motionless at his desk, staring blankly at the door through which the police officers had passed. Thoughts flickered
in his mind like darting insects. Buzzing, angry insects which scratched at his feelings, grazing and wounding him. Gradually his agitation eased as he reached back into his memory allowing images from the last few brittle, difficult weeks to be temporarily replaced by pictures from a more distant past some years ago: joyful images of Moira before her happiness began to fragment. It was a day in April, the sky was a deep cobalt blue, the blossom from the trees shimmering in the brilliance of a sun which seemed to have been reborn after a long, cold absence. She was in the garden, sipping a long drink, waiting for him to come home. When she saw him, she jumped up and ran across the grass, reaching her arms out in welcome, the miraculous news of her first pregnancy tumbling from her lips, because she simply couldn’t hold back the flood of her delight. They had hugged and kissed each other until they were breathless.

He lifted his hands, touching his lips – the lips Moira had kissed. He recalled the soft sweetness of her breath on his cheek, the warmth of her lips. He fought to push away the last memory of her face as it had been when he made the formal identification earlier. A face waxen and still, her beautiful lips tinged with blue, her body covered with the white mortuary sheet.

He closed his eyes tightly shut, bracing himself against the pain of loss, willing himself not to cry out.

Why hadn’t she told him about this pregnancy? And, of course, why hadn’t he, himself, noticed or formed some intuition about it? The answer lay in the coolness that had been growing between them. Nothing shattering, nothing made ugly with cold silences or insults hurled in anger. Just a slow distancing, a gradual erosion of their need to share thoughts and feelings, both negative and positive. They had been polite strangers. Apart from that early morning back in the autumn when they had come home from the hospital ball and made love, their senses fuelled and blurred with the champagne they had been drinking through the evening. It was then that she must have conceived: the very last time they had had sex.

He told himself she must have been waiting to get well past the dangerous twelve week stage, that must have been the reason she
hadn’t confided in him. But he didn’t believe his own reassurances. Something had been going on in her life. Something much more menacing than her recent disturbing determination to commit professional suicide.

And now he had lost her, his dearest wife. And the baby he would never know. No! The
two
babies he would never know. He had lost an entire family.

Swift sent his team home for some well-earned rest at seven that evening. He judged that the start of the investigation had not been too promising. So far they had no witnesses, nothing from house to house enquiries, no CCTV footage to help them, no weapon come to light.

After reviewing the information sheets in his desk he decided to call and see Serena Fox, the doctor whose number had kept coming up on Moira Farrell’s mobile. Her address brought him to a renovated Victorian semi-detached on the outskirts of the town. As he got out of the car he saw that the house was in darkness apart from a pale white glow shining from behind blinds on the large window flanking the doorway. A brass plate with Dr Fox’s name and string of medical qualifications gleamed faintly beside the door as he pressed the bell.

Eventually he heard footsteps. A shadow moved behind the door and the lock made a click.

‘Yes!’ The woman who opened the door had a strong fearless gaze and a challenging note to her voice; clearly not a person to be dismayed by an unannounced caller on a dark winter evening.

Swift had his ID ready. ‘Dr Fox?’

She took a careful look at his identification. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

Following her down the hallway he noted that she was tall and bony, her long frame clad in a flowing African-style garment made up of red and orange cotton.

She gestured him to a chair beside the fireplace where a wood burning stove blazed, then took her place on the chair’s matching mate at the other side of the fire. The large mantelpiece was crowded with African face masks and carvings of human heads,
the floor stripped and painted black with African rugs scattered over it. The only light came from an anglepoise lamp on the chunky desk placed in the bay window. Dark shadows crowded together in the corners of the room.

Dr Fox sat staring at her visitor, her eyes steady and unflinching.

‘I believe you were a friend or counsellor to Moira Farrell,’ Swift said.

Her eyes held his, sharp and wary. She inclined her head. ‘Yes, both.’

He drew in a silent breath. ‘Doctor Fox, I have some bad news. I’m afraid Dr Farrell was found dead in her house this morning.’

She raised her head; her gaze slipped away from his for a few seconds and then returned. Although her expression and her facial colour remained unchanged, he saw a tightening in the muscles of her throat. ‘Moira,’ she said to herself softly. She held herself very still. ‘You’re a chief inspector,’ she went on. ‘And visiting late on in the day. That means there must be something unusual, something very irregular about her death.’ The piercing eyes bored into his as though he himself might have played part in Moira’s tragedy. ‘She was killed?’