The History Suite (#9 - The Craig Modern Thriller Series) (29 page)

“So you went to the hospital after five to collect your sister’s things. Tell me what happened.”

He stared at her blankly.

“When you went to the hospital. Tell me your movements when you entered the unit.”

“Oh…well, I went to the sister, Gormley I think her name is, and she gave me the key to Ellie’s locker.”

“Where are the lockers?”

“At the back of the long-stay ward, in the staff-room there.”

If the staff-room was where she pictured it, it was a distance away from where Cooke’s body had been found.

“What did you do then?”

“Opened the locker and got Ellie’s things. There wasn’t much. Just a sweatshirt and some make-up.”

His voice faded away and he looked down. There was no doubt he’d loved his sister.

The mother in Annette took over. “Tell me about Ellie. What was she like?”

Rudd’s face lit up and he looked even younger than he was.

“She was brave, really brave. No matter what Da did to her she never gave in.” He leaned forward eagerly. “She had her own place and all.” His face fell again. “She only moved back home for Ma and me, to see we were OK.”

Annette’s voice was soft. “And her drug-dealing?”

He shook his head hard. “You lot say she did, but I know it’s not true. Ellie wouldn’t have; she was a nurse.”

But Ellie had and no amount of deifying her would make it untrue. Something occurred to Annette.

“Do you take drugs, Eddie?”

His head shaking was vehement now. “No way. That’s a mug’s game. Ellie would have killed me. Nothing, not even weed.”

Eleanor Rudd wasn’t averse to dealing drugs to other kids but she’d wanted to keep her brother clean; it was a double standard they saw a lot but Annette was pleased for him. Eddie didn’t do drugs and he’d got himself a job, now all they had to do was clear him of murder…

“Tell me what else you did on the ward.”

Rudd looked confused. “What do you mean? I just got Ellie’s stuff and left.”

“Which exit did you use?”

The boy screwed up his face, trying to remember. “It…it was the back one. Out to where the old people park their cars. It’s close to the road so I got a bus home.”

It was feasible, another thing to check.

“Which bus did you get?”

“I…I think it was the 2B or D. I’ve the ticket at home.” He smiled shyly. “I collect them.”

Between the street cams, bus CCTV and ticket that placed Eddie out of the unit before Adrian Cooke had even arrived. So how had his fingerprint got on Cooke’s badge? Annette decided to ask straight out.

“Did you see Dr Cooke on the ward that night?”

The solicitor who’d been apparently indifferent suddenly leaned forward and whispered in his client’s ear. Probably something like ‘don’t answer that’, but whatever he’d said Eddie ignored it.

“I didn’t see him and if I had I’d have punched him in the face. If Ellie got involved in drugs that bastard must’ve done it.” His voice broke. “Without him our Ellie would still be alive.”

It was debatable, given that they were both dead at someone else’s hand, but Annette agreed that Adrian Cooke and Ellie Rudd together had been a lethal mix. She decided to play her ace.

“Dr Cooke is dead and your fingerprint was found on the badge on his white coat. Can you explain that?”

Instead of the horrified retreat she’d expected from him, from anyone accused of leaving their fingerprint on a badge worn by a corpse, Rudd shocked her by giving a loud cheer.

“Cooke’s dead? He’s really dead? Who did it, because I’d like to buy him a beer.”

It sounded like a line he’d heard somewhere. Annette imagined it was on the radio that had taught him how to speak. Rudd had focused on the first part of her sentence and completely missed or ignored the rest, but one thing was certain; he’d wanted Adrian Cooke dead. The boy was still speaking.

“If he got Ellie involved in all sorts then he killed her as sure as if he’d strangled her himself. I hope whoever did for him gets away and you never catch them.”

He said it like an innocent man but Annette repeated her question in an insistent voice.

“How did your print get on Dr Cooke’s badge?”

Rudd shook his head. “Haven’t the foggiest. I probably tried on his coat one day before I knew what a bastard he was.” He gazed at the ceiling as if trying to remember. “Yeh…I remember now. I borrowed it for a school play.”

“I thought you rarely went to school, your father wouldn’t allow it.”

“The social made him send me for a bit. We did a show for end-of-term. Frankenstein. I played the mad doctor and Cooke lent me his coat.”

Again, easy to check. In the modern world where every phone had a camera, someone must have taken a picture of the show. Annette closed her folder and stood up to leave. Rudd leaned forward with an intense look on his face.

“How did Cooke die?”

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that.”

His voice deepened so much his words took on a movie-trailer’s doom. “I hope it really hurt. Nothing was bad enough for him.” He folded his arms defiantly, ignoring his brief’s warning glance. “I hope that whoever did it gets a medal for killing the bastard.”

Annette shook her head then the mother and detective spoke together. “We’ll be checking everything you’ve told us, Eddie, and you’ll remain here until we’re satisfied. But…please don’t let your hatred of Adrian Cooke twist you. You seem like a nice lad.”

Before he could come back with something that changed her mind, she was out the door.

***

It was the strangest I.D. parade that Craig had ever attended. Instead of a two-way mirror into a room, where men holding numbers faced front and recited words dictated by the victim and the crime, they were sitting outside a sound-proofed room in Des’ fifth floor lab. They watched through the glass as Ian Jacobs sat wearing headphones, nodding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ each time Des turned a dial. ‘Yes’ meant they were getting closer to the squeaking sound that he’d heard and ‘no’ meant the opposite.

Craig and John lounged on their chairs with an insouciance befitting their age and vast experience of the world. In reality it was the onset of exhaustion that this stage in a case always brought. Craig felt slightly guilty, knowing that his team was being industrious elsewhere, all except Annette who’d called to ask for a few hours personal time. Mysterious but not his business to ask.

As the old hands lounged Davy sat forward eagerly with his face close to the glass. Craig couldn’t work out if it was because he was on an outing from the C.C.U. or because the scientist in him was excited by the libraries of scents and sounds.

John nodded at the young analyst. “Doesn’t he get out much?”

Craig raised an eyebrow sceptically. “Listen to the international playboy! This from a man who thought a trip to a nightclub was exciting until two years ago.”

John laughed despite himself. “I beg to differ. I’ve travelled all over the world in my job.”

“Yes, and when you got to wherever you were going how much of the local nightlife did you see? None! Airport, hotel, mortuary or burial-site and back again. It’s only since you met Natalie that you’ve even been to a cinema!”

John’s reply was truncated by a loud “Ssshhh” and Davy shaking his head.

“I’m trying to listen.”

John laughed in disbelief; not at being told off, he’d been told off plenty of times before, but that Davy was trying to listen to an inaudible sound.

“You can’t hear anything through the glass!”

“I can. He’s s…saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and if you two weren’t talking you’d know that it’s much more ‘yes’ than ‘no’ at the moment. W…We’re getting close.”

John’s interest was piqued even if Craig’s wasn’t. He adopted Davy’s pose while Craig shook his head and smiled. After five minute’s more ‘yes-ing’ Des emerged from the room.

Craig’s eagerness suddenly matched the others’. “Well?”

Des made a face that said ambivalence. “He narrowed it to one of two things. Rubber soled shoes rubbing against the unit’s polymer flooring, or rubber wheels of some sort doing the same. I’m not sure that it gets you much further.”

Craig sighed heavily. Even if the wheels belonged to a ward trolley it didn’t narrow it down; there were a dozen on the unit. It had been too much to hope that it would help. Davy asked a question.

“What about the s…smell? The mint.”

Des’ hirsute face broke into a grin.

“We had a bit more luck with that. It wasn’t mint, it was menthol”

Craig perked up. “As in…?”

“Menthol’s the base note in some perfumes and it’s an ingredient in medications, cleaning products and pesticides. Then of course there’s the obvious: menthol gum, mouthwash and cigarettes; although I can’t see cigarettes being smoked on a ward.”

“It doesn’t mean that someone hadn’t been smoking them earlier.” Craig leapt to his feet. “Thanks Des, that’s been helpful. Thank the archive and we’ll let them know if it helps us solve the case.”

The others watched as he headed for the door. John spoke first. “Now what?”

“Now we’re heading back to the ranch to search for a different set of clues.”

***

Balmoral Avenue.

Annette hadn’t expected the flowers, or the invitation to his house for an elaborate dinner, but later, as she gazed at the kind man across the table, she wondered why she hadn’t. It seemed so typical now that she knew him. She scanned Mike Augustus’ open face; he was six years younger than her and comfortably rounded, with a thatch of mousey-brown hair and a permanently innocent look, despite the horrific things he saw all day. His shy demeanour made people underestimate him but he had a brilliant mind, John would never have hired him otherwise. And even if he wasn’t a matinée idol he was plenty handsome enough for her.

Mike had had a reputation as genuine and uncomplicated since he’d started work with John, but he’d barely registered on her when he’d attended briefings, other than as a nice man. She’d been too wrapped up in the cases, too busy with her marriage to Pete, a marriage that until a year before she’d thought would remain unchanged until she died.

But that was then and now she had a decision to make. They couldn’t keep having an affair. The deceit was making Mike ill and if she was being honest it was doing the same to her. Her marriage had been over for months, now she had to admit it. She also had to admit that their relationship, which had begun as a directionless tryst at John’s wedding, had suddenly turned into love. Annette stared into Mike Augustus’ soft brown eyes and answered their silent question with a nod. Tonight they would make love under the pretence of her working late and tomorrow she would go home and change her life.

***

The man stared out the window, thinking about what he’d done. What had he really done wrong? He’d rid the world of two drug-dealers and made it safer for people’s kids. They should give him a medal yet he knew the police would arrest him if they got the chance. He shook his head in disgust, drawing a curious glance from a woman nearby. There wasn’t much that he couldn’t abide in life but drug-dealers were definitely top of the list. Parasitic leeches who fed off the vulnerable; they made pond life look evolved.

Social commentators would say that addicts wanted to buy drugs; therefore dealers were merely fulfilling a need. Market forces, supply and demand. But commentators were just talking heads, members of the chattering classes who earned money saying things they didn’t believe and giving opinions as mutable as mercury. They called it informed debate to ease their consciences, when really it was egocentric crap. The truth was simpler than anything they said. Addicts needed to be helped, not fed drugs by dealers whose only interest was in making money off their backs. And drug-dealers had to be killed.

Cooke and Rudd had had good jobs, enough to eat and the respect of practically everyone that they’d met, yet it hadn’t been enough for them. Some people never had enough.

Cooke he could find some excuse for; he was addicted. Once that craving took hold, he’d seen people rip off their skin for a fix. Nurse Eleanor Rudd he had no sympathy for at all.

The man sighed as he remembered the first time he’d seen an addict in withdrawal. Screaming in pain as their long dulled nerve endings suddenly felt everything and their clothes became too painful to wear. Scratching at the injection sites on their feet and arms and groin, as if they could free whatever residual opiate might lurk there, to numb themselves for another few hours. He’d seen addicts of every sort but for him Heroin was definitely the worst. He’d seen people eat it, smoke it and inject it anywhere they could find a vein, infecting their tissues with dirty needles hosting hepatitis and HIV.

As he thought of it the man clenched his hand into a fist and smacked it hard against the glass, drawing gasps and looks. He didn’t care. It was only a matter of time before the cops caught him but he had no regrets; it was payback for all the lives he’d seen destroyed. He stared out at the trees and made his decision. If they were going to find him then they were going to do it on his terms.

***