George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (15 page)

‘“That other one”,’ George said carefully. Clearly Mrs Glenney was a lady who took questions very literally.

‘’S right. ’Im what said ’e was a technician and ’ad some special work to do in the lab. Well, I said to ’im, technician you may be, I said, but ’ow am I to know? I got to phone Mr Bittacy, seein’ as ’ow you’ve got no ID — like what you ’ad yourself, doctor — you stand ’ere, I said to ’im, and I’ll go and call Mr Bittacy and see what’s what.’

‘And what was what?’

‘Eh?’ Mrs Glenney was puzzled again.

‘What happened?’ George wanted to shake her.

‘Oh, yes. I phoned, like I said, from your office. I left ’im out ’ere, o’ course, I wasn’t goin’ to have ’im listenin’ in. An’ when I managed to get ’old of Mr Bittacy an’ I explained ’e said to keep the fella ’ere and ’e’d come over ’imself. But by the time I got back the fella’d bin and gone, ’n’t ’e? Well, ’e would, wouldn’t ’e? So I told Mr Bittacy all about it, an’ ’e said I done the right thing, though ’e wasn’t best pleased bein’ dragged all the way over ’ere for nothing, as it were.’

‘I can imagine,’ George said absently, thinking hard. ‘Listen, Mrs Glenney, how long did it take you to make that call?’

‘Eh?’

‘I said —’

‘’Ow long? I ’eard you.’ Mrs Glenney bridled. ‘Well, it was a while, I suppose. Maybe five minutes or so. I mean, they ’ad to bleep Mr Bittacy from the switchboard and I ’ad to ’old on a goodish while. They offered to phone me back when ’e answered, but I know them on that switchboard, a right dreamy lot they are, you ’ave to keep on at ’em, so about five minutes it was.’

‘Bit longer’n that,’ the other woman said unexpectedly. ‘It was one of the nights I was here too, don’t you remember, Marlene? I heard you talk to that bloke and then you went off to the office and you was gone ages. I was busy doin’ the floor, and I’d done more’n half of it by the time you’d come back, and it always takes at least twenty minutes, more if you’re on your own, as well you know.’ The woman sounded a touch sharp and Mrs Glenney threw an equally sharp glare at her.

‘Well, it can’t be ’elped if office business ’as to be done,’ she said. ‘But like you said, it mighta bin a bit longer’n five minutes. Ten minutes outside.’

‘Ten minutes,’ George said. ‘Hmm. Well, thanks again, Mrs Glenney, for being so watchful and careful. It’s really appreciated.’ She turned to go back to her office and then said over her shoulder, as innocently as she could, playing being Colombo on the TV show, ‘Oh — when did this happen, then? This business with the technician who wasn’t?’

‘Four weeks ago exactly.’ The woman behind Mrs Glenney said it, quickly. ‘I remember it perfectly well. It was the fifteenth of May, my birthday. It was why I wanted to get away sharpish, you remember, Marlene? My old man said he’d take me for a drink and fish supper. Only of course that fella held us up like.’

Again Mrs Glenney looked affronted. ‘Well, if you say so, I suppose so! I don’t remember that clear. I just know it ’appened and there it is. It makes me more careful, even if it does use up a bit o’ time. You got to do the job right or why bother to do it at all?’ With which Parthian shot she glared triumphantly at her colleague.

‘Of course, you’re quite right,’ George said quickly, needing to settle turbulent waters. ‘What sort of chap was he, by the way?’ And she glanced at the other woman too, hoping for as accurate an answer as she’d given before. But not this time. Both women looked quite blank.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the other woman said. ‘Do you, Marlene?’

Mrs Glenney shook her head. ‘Blokes in white coats, they all look the same, don’t they? I can never tell ’em apart.’

The other woman let out a little cackle of laughter. ‘It’s true, that,’ she said. ‘Just like the Chinese, ’n’t it? Can’t tell ’em apart.’

George, this time casting her a glance full of dislike, tilted her head at Mrs Glenney. ‘Nothing you can recall?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Anything that might help us find him? I mean, he might try again and you never know, someone might get hurt If the man can be spotted in advance, you see …’

Mrs Glenney wrinkled her nose and thought hard, an obvious effort Then she said, ‘I dunno. Sort of ordinary, know what I mean? Nothing you’d specially notice. Not the sort of bloke you’d pay much attention to even if ’e wasn’t dressed up in a white coat Just, well, ordinary.’

‘Fair or dark? Tall or short? Fat or thin?’ George said.

‘Oh, well. It might be that ’e was on the thin side, but then again I didn’t really — I mean …’ She shook her head and turned to the other. ‘Did you notice, Evie, seeing you was noticing the time so closely?’

Evie shook her head. ‘Like you said, Marlene, ordinary. A sort of — Oh, I don’t know. Wispy, like.’

‘Thin, then,’ said George quickly.

‘Well, sort of.’

It was clearly a waste of time. If she questioned them any more they’d start to be suspicious and she’d get no more out of them. So she smiled at them both, repeated her thanks and then added casually, ‘If you should happen to see him around anywhere, let me know, hmm? I’m just a bit curious, that’s all.’

‘Oh, yes, doctor.’ Mrs Glenney was now much more eager to talk and George thought, with a flash of amusement, this beats working with that damned mop, and smiled at her once more and went firmly back to her office.

‘No, there’s nothing else,’ she said as she went. ‘I won’t delay you any longer. Not if I want to see the lab as shining clean as it usually is, hmm?’ She closed the door behind her and stood there and listened as they returned to the big lab, talking to each other in high shrill tones, not that she could actually identify any of the words.

So there was something new to add to Sheila’s experience. Someone claiming to be a technician had come down here to try to get into the lab for some nefarious purpose or other It had to be nefarious; why else would he have disappeared when the officious Mrs Glenney insisted on phoning the security office? The question was, had he managed to carry out that purpose?

Ten minutes Mrs Glenney had spent holding on to the telephone. George had no difficulty in believing the other woman. She had every reason, clearly, to have so accurate a recall, and no need to exaggerate the time Mrs Glenney managed to spend dealing with the lab phone and leaving the floor to someone else to do. And in ten minutes a determined person could do a lot.

But then she stopped and stared sightlessly across the room. What could he have done? He couldn’t have got into the main lab unseen. Evie was in there, resentfully doing the floor on her own. He couldn’t get into her, George’s office, because Mrs Glenney would be calling Mr Bittacy. What did that leave?

She stared inside her head at her department, at the doors that ran off the main corridor outside. There were the doors to the main lab and this office, of course; then another to the big Beetle cupboard where all the supplies were kept for replenishing equipment of the smaller sort, such as slides and pipettes and refillable reagent bottles; and the door to Sheila’s little cubby hole where her records were kept.

Where her records were kept. George went on staring at that inner image. She saw an unidentified hand opening the door to Sheila’s little office; pushing it open; closing it behind him; switching on the light? Maybe. Or using a torch. Again, maybe. And then peering inside those drawers where Sheila filed the copies of the path, reports as a special precaution against the computer going down, or floppy discs being lost or whatever other disaster could befall records. Of course all relevant reports were sent to patients’ notes and to the doctors, including consultants, who had requested them and were also stored in the hospital’s main computer; but Sheila was a nit-picking and thorough person when it came to work. She wanted a third safety net and her files were part of that net. Everything was kept for at least three years, and then shredded carefully.

It had to be there that the mysterious non-technician went, whoever he was. What else was there out in the corridor that could be of any use to him? The only other door led to the loo and the cloakroom, and of course there was the one that led to the stairs and the way down. Could he have wanted something in the morgue? Hardly. What could there be amid the specimens and bodies and the stink of Festival disinfectant and formaldehyde that would interest anyone? She couldn’t imagine such a circumstance.

But she could imagine a need to go into that record office, especially now she knew that Lally Lamark had also been interested in the contents of those files. And Lally Lamark was now dead.

‘Yes,’ she said aloud, ‘yes,’ and did what she had come here to do in the first place. She went over to the filing cabinet where she kept the records of all the post-mortems she had done and reached for the file. Maybe there she’d find a lead to what had happened to Sheila as well as to the lab’s mysterious visitor.

Considering how busily her brain had been whirling when she went to bed, she slept very well, which made it all the more shocking when she woke suddenly at the sound, and lay there rigid with terror. The stupid thing was that she knew it was Gus. It had to be, for no one else had a key and it was the sound of a key turning in the lock that had dragged her out of her sleep.

He peered round the door gingerly, but by that time she was sitting bolt upright, her knees up and wrapped in the duvet with her arms linked round them. ‘Well?’ she said belligerently ‘What do you want?’

‘A bit of a welcome’d be nice,’ he said plaintively. ‘Nothin’ elaborate. I don’t expect you to go throwing yourself at me all soulful and beggin’ me to take you in my manly arms or anythin’ of that sort. Just a nice, “Good mornin’ Gus, and I’m glad you’re ready to apologize”, ’ll do.’

She stared at him in the bright early morning light. He looked perky enough but she could see there was more to his state of mind than that; she had known him long enough to understand that he was often at his most flippant when he was most concerned.

‘What’s happened?’ she said and then looked at her bedside clock. ‘Christ! It’s half past five. What sort of time is this to —’

‘Something else to apologize for,’ he said dolefully He
sighed deeply and with a couple of economical movements went down on his knees beside the bed. ‘Are there any other similar offences you’re annoyed about that I can take into account while I’m down here grovellin’? Mea culpa, mea ever so culpa, whatever it is, and I’m sorry and —’

‘Shut up, idiot,’ she said. ‘And I’ll think about the apologies. No, stay where you are. It’ll do you good. What is it you’re so anxious about that you turn up at this time of the morning?’

‘Anxious? Just because I want to ask you to forgive me for being such a ham-handed ass on Friday —’

‘Ham-fisted and ham-butted as well,’ she said. ‘And stop trying it on. This is me, remember? What is it that’s worrying you?’

He sighed, got to his feet, then sat on the side of the bed. ‘I’ll never be able to call my soul my own ever again,’ he complained. ‘From now on I’m obviously as transparent as a TV screen. What sort of life is that, I ask you?’

‘I asked a question first.’ She refused to be deflected. ‘What is it? What — is — the — mat — ter?’ She pronounced each syllable with offensive emphasis.

He seemed to settle more heavily onto the bed. ‘There was an incident at Old East last night.’

She felt herself freeze. ‘An incident?’

‘Yup.’ He looked at her and shook his head slightly. ‘No need to look so worried. It was only a small thing, really. But the way things have been lately they thought they’d better call us. And because I’d told them at the nick to call me if anything happened involving Old East, well, they did.’

‘Is anyone hurt?’ she asked urgently.

‘It’s all right, doll.’ He reached out and took one of her hands. ‘No need to panic. No one’s hurt. Not physically.’

‘Then some other way — Oh, for pity’s sake, Gus!’

He was succinct. ‘OK. There was an emergency in Ballantyne Ward at half past midnight. A big flap, lots of doctors flying about. Apparently they had a patient who had — what
was it? Laryngeal carcinoma with local spread and an artery went, and —’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the picture.’ She did indeed, and could imagine the fuss at once; when a throat cancer erodes a major artery the result can be spectacularly bloody and certainly calls every medical person around into service. ‘But what —’

‘Listen. While the fuss was on, no one paid much attention to such things as ward security and so forth. When they’d finished and the man had been transferred to intensive care, they could sort themselves out. This was about half past one. The night nurse did a round of the ward and found there’d been an interloper. Several patients’ things had been turned over. One man had his clothes taken and strewn around and another had had her jewellery taken from her bed table and dropped in the corridor outside. The only real loss was Sheila Keen’s. She had her bag taken. It had her keys in it. The keys of the lab, it seems, as well as her home keys.’

‘Keys to the lab?’ George was bewildered. ‘But why should she have those? I have a set, and of course the security office does, but Sheila?’

‘I know. She isn’t supposed to have them. She told me that and very embarrassed she was too. Seems she had a set cut for her private use years ago. Sometimes, she said, she likes to be able to work late and it’s handy to be able to lock up without bothering people or having to go over to Security to get the keys.’

‘Dammit, but she is without a doubt the most inquisitive woman who ever drew breath!’ George was furious. ‘How dare she have her own keys? Work? Phooey! She just likes to be able to snoop around when it suits her.’

‘That’s pretty much what I thought. But she does assure me they’re never out of her possession. She never leaves them anywhere. When she’s at work they’re in her pocket. When she’s at home they’re in a secret hiding place. She swears she’s had ’em for several years and there’s never been
a problem, till now. She said she always had her bag beside her during the day in Ballantyne Ward, but she didn’t think there’d be a problem at night, so she didn’t hide it or anything.’