The Spoilers / Juggernaut (2 page)

The way he turned from Stephens was almost an insult. He said to Pomray, ‘I’ll sign the certificate together with the pathologist. It will be better that way.’

‘Yes,’ said Pomray thoughtfully. ‘It might be better.’

Warren stepped to the head of the bed and stood for a moment looking down at the dead girl. Then he drew up the sheet very slowly so that it covered the body. There was something in that slow movement which puzzled Stephens; it was an act of…of tenderness.

He waited until Warren looked up, then said, ‘Do you know anything of her family?’

‘Practically nothing. Addicts resent probing—so I don’t probe.’

‘Nothing about her father?’

‘Nothing beyond the fact that she had a father. She mentioned him a couple of times.’

‘When did she come to you for drugs?’

‘She came to me for treatment about a year and a half ago. For treatment, Inspector.’

‘Of course,’ said Stephens ironically, and produced a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘You might like to look at this.’

Warren took the sheet and unfolded it, noting the worn creases. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘It was in her handbag.’

It was a letter typed in executive face on high quality paper and bore the embossed heading: REGENT FILM COMPANY, with a Wardour Street address. It was dated six months earlier, and ran:

Dear Miss Hellier,

On the instructions of your father I write to tell you that he will be unable to see you on Friday next because he is leaving for America the same afternoon. He expects to be away for some time, how long exactly I am unable to say at this moment.

He assures you that he will write to you as soon as his more pressing business is completed, and he hopes you will not regret his absence too much.

Yours sincerely,

D. L. Walden

Warren said quietly, ‘This explains a lot.’ He looked up. ‘Did he write?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Stephens. ‘There’s nothing here.’

Warren tapped the letter with a finger-nail. ‘I don’t think he did. June wouldn’t keep a secondhand letter like this and destroy the real thing.’ He looked down at the shrouded body. ‘The poor girl.’

‘You’d better be thinking of yourself, Doctor,’ said Stephens sardonically. ‘Take a look at the list of directors at the head of that letter.’

Warren glanced at it and saw: Sir Robert Hellier (Chairman). With a grimace he passed it to Pomray.

‘My God!’ said Pomray. ‘
That
Hellier.’

‘Yes,
that
Hellier,’ said Stephens. ‘I think this one is going to be a stinker. Don’t you agree, Dr Warren?’ There was an unconcealed satisfaction in his voice and a dislike in his eyes as he stared at Warren.

Warren sat at his desk in his consulting-room. He was between patients and using the precious minutes to catch up on the mountain of paperwork imposed by the Welfare State. He disliked the bureaucratic aspect of medicine as much as any doctor and so, in an odd way, he was relieved to be interrupted by the telephone. But his relief soon evaporated when he heard his receptionist say, ‘Sir Robert Hellier wishes to speak to you, Doctor.’

He sighed. This was a call he had been expecting. ‘Put him through, Mary.’

There was a click and a different buzz on the line. ‘Hellier here.’

‘Nicholas Warren speaking.’

The tinniness of the telephone could not disguise the rasp of authority in Hellier’s voice. ‘I want to see you, Warren.’

‘I thought you might, Sir Robert.’

‘I shall be at my office at two-thirty this afternoon. Do you know where it is?’

‘That will be quite impossible,’ said Warren firmly. ‘I’m a very busy man. I suggest I find time for an appointment with you here at my rooms.’

There was a pause tinged with incredulity, then a splutter. ‘Now, look here…’

‘I’m sorry, Sir Robert,’ Warren cut in. ‘I suggest you come to see me at five o’clock today. I shall be free then, I think.’

Hellier made his decision. ‘Very well,’ he said brusquely, and Warren winced as the telephone was slammed down at the other end. He laid down his handset gently and flicked a switch on his intercom. ‘Mary, Sir Robert Hellier will be seeing me at five. You might have to rearrange things a bit. I expect it to be a long consultation, so he must be the last patient.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘Oh, Mary: as soon as Sir Robert arrives you may leave.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

Warren released the switch and gazed pensively across the room, but after a few moments he applied himself once more to his papers.

Sir Robert Hellier was a big man and handled himself in such a way as to appear even bigger. The Savile Row suiting did not tone down his muscular movements by its suavity, and his voice was that of a man unaccustomed to brooking opposition. As soon as he entered Warren’s room he said curtly and without preamble, ‘You know why I’m here.’

‘Yes; you’ve come to see me about your daughter. Won’t you sit down?’

Hellier took the chair on the other side of the desk. ‘I’ll come to the point. My daughter is dead. The police have given me information which I consider incredible. They tell me that she was a drug addict—that she took heroin.’

‘She did.’

‘Heroin which you supplied.’

‘Heroin which I prescribed,’ corrected Warren.

Hellier was momentarily taken aback. ‘I did not expect you to admit it so easily.’

‘Why not?’ said Warren. ‘I was your daughter’s physician.’

‘Of all the bare-faced effrontery!’ burst out Hellier. He leaned forward and his powerful shoulders hunched under his suit. ‘That a doctor should prescribe hard drugs for a young girl is disgraceful.’

‘My prescription was…’

‘I’ll see you in jail,’ yelled Hellier.

‘…entirely necessary in my opinion.’

‘You’re nothing but a drug pedlar.’

Warren stood up and his voice cut coldly through Hellier’s tirade. ‘If you repeat that statement outside this room I shall sue you for slander. If you will not listen to what I have to say then I must ask you to leave, since further communication on your part is pointless. And if you want to complain about my ethics you must do so to the Disciplinary Committee of the General Medical Council.’

Hellier looked up in astonishment. ‘Are you trying to tell me that the General Medical Council would condone such conduct?’

‘I am,’ said Warren wryly, and sat down again. ‘And so would the British Government—they legislated for it.’

Hellier seemed out of his depth. ‘All right,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I suppose I should hear what you have to say. That’s why I came here.’

Warren regarded him thoughtfully. ‘June came to see me about eighteen months ago. At that time she had been taking heroin for nearly two years.’

Hellier flared again. ‘Impossible!’

‘What’s so impossible about it?’

‘I would have known.’

‘How would you have known?’

‘Well, I’d have recognized the…the symptoms.’

‘I see. What are the symptoms, Sir Robert?’

Hellier began to speak, then checked himself and was silent. Warren said, ‘A heroin addict doesn’t walk about with palsied hands, you know. The symptoms are much subtler than that—and addicts are adept at disguising them. But you might have noticed something. Tell me, did she appear to have money troubles at that time?’

Hellier looked at the back of his hands. ‘I can’t remember the time when she didn’t have money troubles,’ he said broodingly. ‘I was getting pretty tired of it and I put my foot down hard. I told her I hadn’t raised her to be an idle spendthrift.’ He looked up. ‘I found her a job, installed her in her own flat and cut her allowance by half.’

‘I see,’ said Warren. ‘How long did she keep the job?’

Hellier shook his head. ‘I don’t know—only that she lost it.’ His hands tightened on the edge of the desk so that the knuckles showed white. ‘She robbed me, you know—she stole from her own father.’

‘How did that happen?’ asked Warren gently.

‘I have a country house in Berkshire,’ said Hellier. ‘She went down there and looted it—literally looted it. There was a lot of Georgian silver, among other things. She had the nerve to leave a note saying that she was responsible—she even gave me the name of the dealer she’d sold the stuff to. I got it all back, but it cost me a hell of a lot of money.’

‘Did you prosecute?’

‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ said Hellier violently. ‘I have a reputation to keep up. A fine figure I’d cut in the papers if I prosecuted my own daughter for theft. I have enough trouble with the Press already.’

‘It might have been better for her if you had prosecuted,’ said Warren. ‘Didn’t you ask yourself why she stole from you?’

Hellier sighed. ‘I thought she’d just gone plain bad—I thought she’d taken after her mother.’ He straightened his shoulders. ‘But that’s another story.’

‘Of course,’ said Warren. ‘As I say, when June came to me for treatment, or rather, for heroin, she had been addicted for nearly two years. She said so and her physical condition confirmed it.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Hellier. ‘That she came to you for heroin and not for treatment.’

‘An addict regards a doctor as a source of supply,’ said Warren a little tiredly. ‘Addicts don’t want to be treated—it scares them.’

Hellier looked at Warren blankly. ‘But this is monstrous. Did you give her heroin?’

‘I did.’

‘And no treatment?’

‘Not immediately. You can’t treat a patient who won’t be treated, and there’s no law in England which allows of forcible treatment.’

‘But you pandered to her. You gave her the heroin.’

‘Would you rather I hadn’t? Would you rather I had let her go on the streets to get her heroin from an illegal source at an illegal price and contaminated with God knows what filth? At least the drug I prescribed was clean and to British Pharmacopoeia Standard, which reduced the chance of hepatitis.’

Hellier looked strangely shrunken. ‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘You don’t,’ agreed Warren. ‘You’re wondering what has happened to medical ethics. We’ll come to that later.’ He tented his fingers. ‘After a month I managed to persuade June to take treatment; there are clinics for cases like hers. She was in for twenty-seven days.’ He stared at Hellier with hard eyes. ‘If I had been her I doubt if I could have lasted a week. June was a brave girl, Sir Robert.’

‘I don’t know much about the…er…the actual treatment.’

Warren opened his desk drawer and took out a cigarettebox. He took out a cigarette and then pushed the open box across the desk, apparently as an afterthought. ‘I’m sorry; do you smoke?’

‘Thank you,’ said Hellier, and took a cigarette. Warren leaned across and lit it with a flick of his lighter, then lit his own.

He studied Hellier for a while, then held up his cigarette. ‘There’s a drug in here, you know, but nicotine isn’t particularly powerful. It produces a psychological dependency. Anyone who is strong-minded enough can give it up.’ He leaned forward. ‘Heroin is different; it produces a physiological dependency—the
body
needs it and the mind has precious little say about it.’

He leaned back. ‘If heroin is withheld from an addicted patient there are physical withdrawal symptoms of such a nature that the chances of death are about one in five—and that is something a doctor must think hard about before he begins treatment.’

Hellier whitened. ‘Did she suffer?’

‘She suffered,’ said Warren coldly. ‘I’d be only too pleased to tell you she didn’t, but that would be a lie. They all suffer. They suffer so much that hardly one in a hundred will see the treatment through. June stood as much of it as she could take and then walked out. I couldn’t stop her—there’s no legal restraint.’

The cigarette in Hellier’s fingers was trembling noticeably. Warren said, ‘I didn’t see her for quite a while after that, and then she came back six months ago. They usually come back. She wanted heroin but I couldn’t prescribe it. There had been a change in the law—all addicts must now get their prescriptions from special clinics which have been set up by the government. I advised treatment, but she wouldn’t hear of it, so I took her to the clinic. Because I knew her medical history—and because I took an interest
in her—I was able to act as consultant. Heroin was prescribed—as little as possible—until she died.’

‘Yet she died of an overdose.’

‘No,’ said Warren. ‘She died of a dose of heroin dissolved in a solution of methylamphetamine—and that’s a cocktail with too much of a kick. The amphetamine was not prescribed—she must have got it somewhere else.’

Hellier was shaking. ‘You take this very calmly, Warren,’ he said in an unsteady voice. ‘Too damned calmly for my liking.’

‘I have to take it calmly,’ said Warren. ‘A doctor who becomes emotional is no good to himself or his patients.’

‘A nice, detached, professional attitude,’ sneered Hellier. ‘But it killed my June.’ He thrust a trembling finger under Warren’s nose. ‘I’m going to have your hide, Warren. I’m not without influence. I’m going to break you.’

Warren looked at Hellier bleakly. ‘It’s not my custom to kick parents in the teeth on occasions like this,’ he said tightly. ‘But you’re asking for it—so don’t push me.’

‘Push you!’ Hellier grinned mirthlessly. ‘Like the Russian said—I’m going to bury you!’

Warren stood up. ‘All right—then tell me this: do you usually communicate with your children at second hand by means of letters from your secretary?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Six months ago, just before you went to America, June wanted to see you. You fobbed her off with a form letter from your secretary, for God’s sake!’

‘I was very busy at the time. I had a big deal impending.’

‘She wanted your help. You wouldn’t give it to her, so she came to me. You promised to write from America. Did you?’

‘I was busy,’ said Hellier weakly. ‘I had a heavy schedule—a lot of flights…conferences…’

‘So you didn’t write. When did you get back?’

‘A fortnight ago.’

‘Nearly six months away. Did you know where your daughter was? Did you try to find out? She was still alive then, you know.’