The Burden of Doubt (9 page)

Jesus wept! Damn and bloody blast!

Shaun stumbled around the bungalow, cursing the cushions and the edges of the carpets and the fancy jars on the kitchen shelves and the place behind the toilet and the washbasin and the hat boxes on top of the wardrobe and the empty pockets of the jackets neatly lined up on the rails beneath.

He’d searched bloody everywhere – the whole length and breadth of the bungalow and hadn’t found so much as pound coin. There was loose change in a fruit dish in the kitchen: a stack of coppers and five and ten pence pieces. The flaming lot only came to one pound and seventy-four bloody pence. He shook the coins on to the kitchen counter and picked up the fruit dish, recalling it from his childhood as a set of six which his gran would bring out proudly when his aunt and uncle came to tea. She’d put sweet tinned strawberries in the glasses then bring a jug of carnation milk to pour over – as much as you wanted. He twirled the glass between his chunky thumb and finger. It was made of thin yellow glass, the bowl perched on a thin little stem like an overgrown glass for Babycham – one of his gran’s favourite tipples, as she liked to call it.

Hiding behind closed floral curtains Shaun had combed through the bungalow as though his life depended on it. Which, in a way, it did. Because if he didn’t find any money how was he
going to live? He couldn’t go to work. He couldn’t go to the post office to have a stab at getting his hands on his gran’s savings account. He couldn’t go shopping. He couldn’t step outside the door, or even answer it. He couldn’t do a damn thing, because some bloody arse-licking member of the public and lover of the piggy police would be bound to spot him and get him hauled in for questioning about that doctor who’d got herself bumped off. Not that they’d got anything on him, he’d been making sure to watch the news and they just kept banging on about how the police were
wanting to question
a Mr Shaun Busfield.
In connection with the murder of Moira Farrell,
they said, all mealy mouthed like the police had told them to be. What they really meant was the bloody police were going to pin it on him whether he’d done it or not. And by now the whole country would be thinking he was as guilty as hell.

He filled the kettle and set it to boil. There was around enough coffee in the jar to last another day or two, and there was another one in the cupboard. And there were tins of meat and beans to last him maybe into the end of next week. Enough chocolate biscuits to last a bit longer than that. But he’d got no milk, no bread, no butter. He’d had to throw everything out of the fridge, it had all gone bad while his gran was in hospital. A whole week she’d been in that good-for-nothing place and the fucking doctors hadn’t done a bloody thing to help her. And then they decided to operate, and about bloody time. And then look what happened. They went and let her die on the operating table. As good as killed her. As good as
murdered
her.

And Tina was no fucking good. He hadn’t heard a peep from her, not a flaming dicky bird. He knew she wouldn’t shop him – well, for a start, she wouldn’t bloody dare. But she might at least have phoned to see how he was getting on, let him know what the police had been up to. She could do it from a phone box for Christ’s sake. All anonymous, no way to trace him or her. He supposed he could ring her mobile. Dial 141 so they couldn’t get his number. But he wasn’t sure if the police couldn’t somehow get round that. Phones were all digital and computerized now, weren’t they? And he’d heard that whatever
you put into a computer, somehow someone really smart could always find it.

The old panic from the past pushed inside him, heating his blood, making his heart gallop, tightening a band around his chest so he could hardly breathe.

What if Tina decided to shop him after all? She’d no backbone, that one – she was nothing but gristle and putty. If they took her to the station and frightened her half to death she’d cough. And even if she didn’t he had a horrible feeling they’d track him down in the end. They’d come for him early one morning, a whole bloody regiment of them, armed to the teeth, yelling and battering down the door. Christ! And they’d have made sure he was fitted up good and proper.

He looked down at the glass in his hand, then hurled it against the wall and watched it shatter into a spin and sparkle of fragmenting glass.

Adrian Cavanagh looked at the photographs Georgie Tyson had taken and made a very creditable attempt to appear unruffled. He also, very wisely, made no attempt to deny that the pictures told a certain story.

Swift and Laura waited patiently for his verbal reaction.

‘I’m afraid that in recent weeks there had been some … disagreements between Moira and myself,’ he said with
low-voiced
regret. ‘Not personal, I hasten to add. Matters of procedure,’ he concluded vaguely. ‘Medical procedure.’ He gave the impression the police wouldn’t be at all interested in the details of such procedure, and would most probably not understand them.

He dropped his eyes to his diary which was lying open on the desk in front of him, then with a sharp gesture he clicked it shut and squared his shoulders, making eye contact with each detective showing his readiness to face whatever was coming next.

‘Are you talking about clinical procedures in treating patients?’ Laura asked. One of her previous boyfriends had been a junior hospital doctor and it had been impossible not to pick up a few trade secrets connected to the practice of medicine.

Cavanagh’s initial expression showed that he was slightly taken aback by the question. The lines of his face settled into new heedfulness.

‘No,’ he said crisply.

‘Surgical procedures?’ Laura continued. ‘As an anaesthetist I
presume Dr Farrell would have a great deal of experience in that area.’

‘Moira was a specialist in anaesthetics,’ Cavanagh said with one of his smooth smiles. ‘She was not in the habit of commenting on the surgical procedures of myself and my team. Or any other team she worked with.’

‘Mr Cavanagh,’ Swift said, ‘would you clarify for us what the dispute with Moira Farrell was about. The photographs clearly suggest that both of you were angry.’

Cavanagh considered for a few moment. ‘We had a disagreement about a matter relating to the management. There’s a reorganization exercise going on in the hospital, including our department. I’m very keen to divert a sizeable slice of our budget to a new specialist baby unit. Moira had strong feelings that the money should be spent on other projects.’

‘I see.’ Swift took a moment to process this information.

Outside in the corridor there was the sound of raised voices. Cavanagh turned his head towards the door and glanced covertly at his watch. Swift and Laura’s gazes connected, signalling an awareness that the consultant’s attention had been diverted from the difficulties ongoing in the little office and were now engaged with potentially greater difficulties beyond.

There was a tap on the door. A young woman with dark curls, and bright scarlet lipstick, popped her head around the door, apology and deference written all over her pretty features. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Mr Cavanagh, but your eleven-thirty appointment has arrived.’

Further agitated protests were coming from the corridor close to the nurses’ station: a man’s voice making demands, a young woman’s voice remonstrating with seemingly little effect.

‘I really think you need to come …’ The curly haired woman’s eyes were wide with alarm. ‘Shall I call Security?’ The anxiety in her demeanour suggested that Cavanagh really needed to deal with the situation right away.

Cavanagh jumped up. ‘You must excuse me,’ he told the watchful detectives, heading out into the corridor with a purposeful stride.

Swift got up, walked round the desk Cavanagh had just vacated, flipped open the diary and scanned through the current day’s appointments. The shouts had temporarily stopped. ‘Let’s get a ringside seat,’ he murmured to Laura, closing the diary and moving towards the nurses’ station.

The sounds of angry protests had resumed but were now muted. Cavanagh and the man who had been kicking up a fuss were moving down the corridor, about to disappear into another small office. He noticed that Cavanagh had a guiding hand around the man’s shoulders, gently but firmly propelling him away from the exposing publicity of the corridor.

‘Dissatisfied patient?’ Laura suggested. ‘Or rather the relative of one. Men don’t have much use for the services of a gynaecologist, do they?’

Swift smiled, nodding agreement.

He got out his ID and went up to the nurses’ station. The young woman sitting behind it had her head down, busily making notes as though nothing untoward had happened.

‘We’re police officers,’ he said, placing his ID on the shelf bordering the station. ‘Did you know Moira Farrell?’ he asked the young woman, who was still desperately trying to pretend she was unable to pull herself from her administrative work, despite the looming presence of the two police officers.

The simple, direct question forced her to look up, a
round-cheeked
young woman with brown hair cuffed back from her face with a ring of black velvet. Her eyes peered anxiously at him through black-rimmed glasses. ‘Yes.’ A hot pink blush started up in her pale cheeks.

‘As a friend?’

The blush had now spread into her throat and her ears. ‘No. I’m just a probationer,’ she said.

‘Probationers don’t become friends with consultants?’ Swift suggested.

A glimmer of relief flashed in her eyes. ‘You could say that.’

Swift nodded in understanding. ‘Did you know her as a colleague?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled at her as though she was being really helpful. Then waited.

‘She was a nice person.’ There was a wistful sadness in the young woman’s eyes. ‘A really nice person. Like she had no side to her.’

‘Nurse Hay,’ he said, having taken note of her identification badge, ‘would you describe Dr Farrell as generally well liked in the department?’

Nurse Hay opened her mouth to make an instant response and then closed it again. ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding guarded. ‘Oh, yes,’ she added with emphasis. She glanced nervously down the corridor, her eyes following the route Cavanagh and the irate visitor had taken.

‘Do you think Mr Cavanagh will be free soon?’ Laura asked in friendly tones. ‘To speak to us again?’

‘I don’t know.’ Nurse Hay’s face had lost its flush now, but the guarded air still persisted. She looked down once more at the notes she had been making.

‘Thank you, Nurse Hay,’ Swift murmured, glancing at Laura and giving a jerk of his head towards the exit door of the department.

‘So, where are we at now, sir?’ Laura asked her boss, her mind running back through the last two interviews.

‘Travelling down a number of seemingly blind alleys,’ he commented.

She didn’t disagree. ‘And squeezing all the sponges dry with remarkable speed.’

‘Maybe Cavanagh isn’t as safe and dry as he thinks,’ Swift said. ‘According to his diary his appointment was with someone called Tricklebank.’

‘Do you think Tricklebank was Mr Exceedingly Angry? The shouter in the corridor?’

‘Quite likely. So as we haven’t many more blind alleys to head down urgently, why don’t we wait around and see if we can catch Mr Tricklebank and have a word when he emerges from his clash with Cavanagh?’

Laura saw the point. ‘And if he manages to slip out without our
seeing, he shouldn’t be too difficult to find. There can’t be many Tricklebanks in this part of the world, can there? Or, indeed, many parts at all.’

Doug had worked his way through Shaun’s workmates, trying to get a handle on the man’s daily routines. Nothing of immediate significance had turned up. Shaun had emerged sounding like a guy who kept his private life to himself. His workmates knew that Shaun lived with a girlfriend, but none of them referred to her by name, or seemed to know anything about her or the relationship. The only thing of any possible importance was that one of his mates mentioned that Shaun’s grandmother had died recently and that Shaun had seemed pretty cut up about it. Doug had followed this up with a gleam of hope, but neither the informant nor any of the other colleagues knew the grandmother’s name or where she had lived.

The manager at Busfield’s works knew even less, except that Busfield was a reliable worker who turned up on time and turned in the work. He’d been employed at the firm for two years. And as regards what he did in his spare time, well, the manager considered that was none of the firm’s business. And no, he couldn’t put his hand on the references Busfield had come with when he got the job.

Doug doubted there’d ever been any question of formal references. Probably no more than word of mouth of the last employer who more than likely wanted to get shot of Busfield. And predictably this present manager had stated that he couldn’t imagine Busfield being the sort of bloke who would run amok and kill a woman in her own house in cold blood. Whereas we old cynics in the police know that there’s no such thing as the sort of bloke who wouldn’t commit murder, he told himself. Everyone’s the sort of bloke when you get down to the nitty-gritty.

‘Do you have a signing out policy for using the vans?’ Doug asked, having noticed two cream vehicles painted with the firm’s logo standing out in the yard behind the warehouse.

The manager eyed the constable with a world-weary stare. ‘In theory, yes.’

‘Do you keep a book?’

‘Yeah. Don’t run away with the idea we’re slack outfit here. Drivers have to sign in to get issued a key.’

‘But there can be occasional slip-ups,’ Doug commented, his tone non-committal.

The manager shrugged. He guessed the constable understood the situation only too well.

‘I’d like to see the book,’ Doug said.

The manager rummaged amongst the piles of papers on his desk. ‘Here – help yourself!’

Doug leafed through the pages for January, but found no entry in Shaun Busfield’s name. However going back a few months provided evidence of three weekends during the autumn when Busfield had signed for one of the vans. Pointing this out to the manager he intimated that the police would need to take the vehicle in for examination.

The manager threw his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Is this really necessary?’

‘Yes.’ Doug disliked outright lies, but found this one not too difficult when he considered the issue of covering his back as far as reprisals from Superintendent Finch were concerned.

Leaving the manager sighing in weary disbelief at the demands of the law, he went on to Tina’s place of work and dragged her from the task in hand which was painting a bored looking client’s fingernails with bubble-gum pink varnish.

Tina was not at all pleased, and decidedly on edge. Which was exactly what Doug had aimed to achieve.

‘I don’t like you coming to my work,’ she said, tight-lipped, as she spoke to him on the little platform forming the stepping down place from the fire escape at the back of the building. In the cruel rawness of the grey, darkening afternoon she was soon shivering in her thin pink gingham work overalls and she wrapped her arms tightly around her chest in a gesture of protection and protest.

Calm but insistent, Doug kept up a steady bombardment of questions as to Shaun’s whereabouts. But despite her agitation, Tina was firm and steadfast in asserting that she had not seen or
heard from Shaun since his disappearance at the time the police came looking for him.

‘He’s not stupid,’ she told them. ‘He’ll keep his head down.’

‘And why would that be?’ Doug asked.

‘Because he’ll know he’ll be in bother if you find him.’ She rolled her eyes in exasperation at the banality of the questions.

‘
When
we find him, love,’ Doug corrected gently.

‘Huh!’

‘And why should he think he’ll be in bother?’ he continued.

‘Who wouldn’t think that if they knew the police were after them for murder?’

‘But he didn’t know that when we came for him, Miss Frazer,’ Doug pointed out.

‘But he certainly will now! Don’t you CID guys ever watch TV?’ She put on a prim expression and enunciated her next words with care. ‘Police are still hunting Shaun Busfield, whom they want to speak to in regard to the murder of Mrs Moira Farrell, a local doctor.’

Doug considered this mimicking of one of the
Look North
newsreaders
to be pretty commendable. ‘Well, you’ve got the spiel off pat,’ he remarked ironically. ‘I’d say you’ve been keeping a close eye on what’s going on in this murder investigation.’

Tina gave a dry laugh. ‘Yeah. And it seems to me there hasn’t been a lot. Going on, I mean.’ She was smirking like a cheeky adolescent.

During the questioning it had occurred to Doug that Shaun Busfield’s girl was quite a hot little piece. ‘Aren’t you worried about him?’ he asked, his mind moving not so much around the issue of loneliness but on the distressing lack of regular and readily available sex when a partner was absent.

Tina gave a foxy smile. ‘He can take care of himself.’

‘So you’re not telling us anything,’ Doug commented.

‘I’ve nothing to tell,’ she said. ‘And if you don’t let me get back to work I’ll have no job and nothing to live on either.’

Doug nodded assent. They went back into the warmth of the building. Tina turned down the corridor leading to the room where her client was waiting.

‘I’ll be back,’ Doug called after her. He climbed into the car and fired the engine. That one could be a whole lot tougher than she looks, he decided as he waited to turn into the traffic. Although she’s hardly Myra Hindley in thrall to Ian Brady. He turned on Radio 2 and tapped out a rhythm on the wheel.

But he’d be surprised if she didn’t know something his team would find interesting. And even more surprised if she let on where he was hiding out.

Reinstalled in Beauty Therapy Room 3 with her now gratifyingly curious client, Tina reloaded her brush with a fresh coating of Sizzling Pink and painted a large framing U around the client’s thumb nail. All in all she felt the interview with the police had gone well. Let Shaun sweat. Let the police sweat. It felt good having a share of the power for a change.

Swift stepped forward as the man he assumed to be Tricklebank walked through the automatically opening exit doors of the hospital. ‘Mr Tricklebank?’

The man turned, a stocky figure in his thirties with light brown hair. His eyes were hollow with weariness as though he hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep for some time. He was wearing a crumpled grey suit, a badly ironed white shirt and a blue tie. His clothes suggested that he was bound for some kind of middle manager job, but the dark stubble of his unshaved chin didn’t quite fit that assumption. He brushed a hand over his forehead and Swift could tell by the tremor that he was drinking too much on a regular basis.