Paget stepped out of the lift into the fourth-floor corridor of the Royal Broadminster Hospital and made his way along to the office of Andrea McMillan. He knocked and heard her call, “Come in.”
He opened the door and stepped inside.
Andrea sat hunched over a stack of forms on which she was scribbling furiously. Before he had a chance to speak, she said, “Be with you in just a second. Take a pew.”
Paget sat down and looked around the small office. It looked exactly the same as the first time he had come here to seek an explanation from Andrea about the death of her former husband, and things had gone so terribly wrong. Same overflowing desk; same bookcase with books and magazines piled high on top of it; same narrow window overlooking the car-park.
But was it the same Andrea? he wondered. They had seen each other only briefly in the past few months, and those encounters had been almost entirely professional. Formal, polite, not at all the way it
used to be before that business at Glenacres had come between them. Yet he sometimes had the feeling that Andrea herself wished things to be the way they had been in the past. It was nothing he could put his finger on—a fleeting expression in her eyes, something in her voice … He shrugged the thought away. Probably just wishful thinking on his part.
“There!” Andrea McMillan signed her name with a flourish. “Thank goodness that’s done at last,” she breathed. “And thank you for being so patient, Nurse.”
Her eyes widened with surprise as she looked up and realized he was not the nurse she’d been expecting. She felt a little foolish, annoyed that he had not said something. Paradoxically, she was pleased to see him.
Paget shrugged apologetically. “You seemed so absorbed in what you were doing, I didn’t like to interrupt. If you are expecting someone else, I can come back later.”
“No. No, it’s all right.” Now that he was here, Andrea didn’t want him to go. “It’s just that one of the nurses said she’d pop into the office later, and I assumed …” She smiled and made her own apologetic gesture with her hands.
He looked well. A bit tired, perhaps, but well. And when he looked at her like that she found herself questioning why she’d been so determined to keep him at a distance all this time. But once bitten … She put on her consultant’s smile. “What can I do for you, Neil?” she asked. “Is this a social or professional visit?”
“I’m looking for help,” he confessed. “I’ve been trying to find out how Reg Starkie is doing after his operation, but not being a relative, I could barely get anyone to admit he’d had an operation, let alone tell me how he is now. Do you think you could find out for me?”
Andrea rolled her eyes heavenward. “Rules,” she said, and shook her head. “You must have run into a nurse or a doctor who’s had a particularly bad day. Almost anyone in the hospital could have told you how he is. We’ve all been concerned about poor old Reg.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
Andrea hesitated. “Considering the condition he was in, he came through the operation very well,” she said slowly. “But he’s grossly overweight and he smokes like a chimney. If he hopes to avoid another attack, he’s going to have to shed a lot of weight, stop smoking and drinking, and exercise regularly.”
Paget grimaced. They both remained silent for several seconds. It would mean a complete change of life-style for Starkie, assuming he could be persuaded to stick to it. “He doesn’t know this yet, I take it?” he said.
Andrea shook her head. “He’s still out of it, and will be for another forty-eight hours, more or less. We’re all pulling for him, of course, but …” The doubt in her eyes was plain to see.
Paget silently agreed. He couldn’t see Starkie taking kindly to that sort of advice, nor could he see the man following it.
Andrea glanced at her watch. “Look,” she said as she stood up and pushed her chair away. “It’s three-thirty, and I haven’t had any lunch, so I was about to go downstairs for a cup of tea and a bun. Why don’t you join me? After that we can check on Reg again before you leave.”
“What about the nurse you were expecting?”
“She can come back later,” Andrea said carelessly.
“You’re on if you’ll allow me to buy.”
Andrea smiled. “In that case,” she told him as she preceded him through the door, “I shall have a very large bun.”
In the event, Andrea had to make do with a very small jam tart, as there was little left from which to choose. She sighed as she poked dejectedly at the sad confection on her plate. “And I was so looking forward to something nice and gooey and horribly unhealthy,” she said. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
Paget sipped his coffee. “Hard day?” he asked.
Andrea opened her eyes. “Not really. Just trying to juggle too many things at once. Not that I should be complaining; it’s my own fault for becoming involved in the first place.”
“In … ?”
“This parade on Saturday, for one thing,” she told him. “That’s what I was doing when you came in. I’m on the committee charged with sorting out the placement of each group in the procession. It doesn’t sound like much, but you wouldn’t believe the things people will do to have their particular entry placed ahead of someone else’s.”
Paget frowned. “How did you become involved with that?” he asked.
The parade on Saturday morning was an annual event, signalling the beginning of Broadminster’s Festival Days. Saturday afternoon was given over to sports events, a fête and garden walk in the grounds of Redford Grange, and there was a concert in the evening. Sunday featured a display of local arts and crafts at the Civic Centre, followed by a series of short one-act plays put on by the local schools in the evening. A series of concerts continued throughout the rest of the week, while the following Saturday would feature the annual traction-engine fair, always a popular event, ending with a fireworks display in the evening.
“Through the riding club,” she told him. “I spoke up at the wrong time and found myself on a committee. Some of the juniors will be riding in the parade, including Sarah.” Her voice softened. “It’s the first time for her, and she’s terribly excited about it.”
“Sarah would be, what … ? Six, now?”
“That’s right.”
“And she’s riding already? Isn’t she awfully young?”
Paget had never met Andrea’s daughter, but he had seen a picture of the fair-haired girl with laughing eyes and cheeky grin. She was sitting astride the top rail of a wooden gate, her long hair blowing in the wind, and her mother was standing beside her, hands ready in case she fell. He remembered all too clearly where and when he’d found the picture—and the countless times he’d wished he hadn’t.
Andrea smiled indulgently. “Sarah’s been riding since she was four,” she told him. “At least,” she amended, “she’s been learning since she was four, and she’s coming along very nicely.”
“At Glenacres?” The words came unbidden and he could have bitten his tongue as soon as they were out. It was the last thing he wanted to bring up right now, and his heart sank as he saw the bleak look in Andrea’s eyes as she shook her head.
“No, of course not,” she said sharply. “I haven’t been back there since … well, not since last winter. We use Fairfield now.” Andrea pushed her plate aside and picked up her coffee.
Paget searched for something to say. “You’ll be riding with Sarah, I suppose?”
“No, she’ll be riding her own pony, Pixie. Lovely little mare. I’m not riding at all, but I shall be right behind her with …” Andrea paused and eyed him speculatively. “What are you doing next Saturday morning?” she asked.
Paget shrugged. “A lot depends on how we are doing with this Bolen murder,” he told her. “Why? What did you have in mind?”
“But you could probably get a couple of hours off if necessary?”
“Oh, yes. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Good! How would you like to come along and give me a hand, then?”
“I’d be happy to,” he told her. There was nothing he would like better than to spend some time with Andrea, and he didn’t much care what it was she wanted him to do.
“Helping you with what, exactly?”
“We have a young woman in our club who has MS,” she said. “She’s riding in the parade. She used to be an excellent rider, but now she has trouble with her balance, and her legs are very weak, so someone has to walk alongside in case she starts to slip. It’s best if there are two people, one on either side. You don’t actually have to do anything at all except be there just in case. Her condition is getting worse, and this may be the last chance she has to ride in the parade. She’s only twenty-three. Will you do it, Neil?”
“It will be my pleasure,” he told her. “Just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”
Paget was in a buoyant mood as he drove back to Charter Lane.
He had used the excuse of not being able to find out how Starkie was progressing to seek out Andrea, and he was glad now that he had. For whatever reason, Andrea had been more relaxed and easier to talk to than on previous occasions. It was as if some invisible barrier between them had been removed, and the prospect of spending time with her on the weekend was one he looked forward to with pleasure.
He found Ormside and Tregalles with their heads together as they studied the autopsy report on Bolen. “It came in a few minutes ago,” Ormside told him, “and we also have a name for our phantom female. Which would you like first, sir?”
“Let’s have the post-mortem results,” said Paget.
Ormside grunted. “In that case, I’ll give you the bad news at the start. The PM was done by a man named Martindale, and the best he can do on time of death is somewhere between nine o‘clock Saturday night and one o’clock Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the lab can’t do anything with the tape that Starkie made, so we don’t know what his conclusion was. Two of the five stab wounds pierced the heart. The others did a lot of damage, but might not have been fatal by themselves. However, Martindale did say that all of the thrusts were very deep, powerful thrusts. His impression is that whoever killed Bolen really wanted him dead.
“So,” Ormside concluded, “I asked him about the call for help Bolen is supposed to have made to the desk, and he said it is extremely unlikely that Bolen could have made that call himself.”
Which merely confirmed what Paget had begun to suspect. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Yes. The knife found at the scene matches the wounds perfectly, but the interesting thing is this: several pieces of white thread were found inside the wounds, which suggests that the victim was wearing a shirt or possibly pyjamas when he was stabbed. The fibres have been sent on for further examination, but he seems pretty sure they come from a shirt.”
Tregalles and Paget exchanged glances. No blood-stained clothing
had been found in the room, which meant that if Bolen was dressed when he was stabbed, the killer must have removed the evidence.
Paget nodded slowly. “Better check the clothing inventory with Charlie,” he told Tregalles. “And find out from Harry Bolen what his brother was wearing at dinner. Also, have someone ask John Bolen what his father was wearing when he went to see him in his room around nine o’clock Saturday evening.”
Tregalles frowned. “What was he doing there?”
“The same thing as everyone else, apparently. Trying to persuade his father not to go through with the Ockrington project. And he told me something else. He said his father was in a belligerent mood and couldn’t wait to get him out of the room because he wanted to telephone someone. He kept saying that he—whoever he is—had given him the wrong figures.”
“And Bolen did make a call at nine thirty-two to Underwood,” Tregalles observed.
Paget nodded. “I think Underwood has been supplying Bolen with the Lambert bids, and either by accident or design, gave Bolen the wrong figures. If Bolen insisted on Underwood bringing him the right set of figures that night, we could have ourselves another suspect. Anything else of significance in the autopsy report?”
“Yes, there is,” said Ormside. “The scratches on the victim’s face were made after the man was dead, not during a fight or struggle. And there was no indication of recent sexual activity.” The sergeant set the report aside. “There’s more, but those were the main points.”
“Anything in there about cuts by glass in Bolen’s feet?”
“Not.”
“I thought not.” Paget crossed the room to stand before a row of photographs from the crime scene taped to a board, and the others followed. “Take a look at the glass around the body,” he said. “If that glass was on the floor before Bolen died, he couldn’t help but tread on it, yet his feet are unmarked.” He picked up another photograph taken from a similar angle after the body had been removed.
“You see that? No glass under the body, either. That lamp was smashed deliberately after Bolen was killed.”
Tregalles nodded. “So the whole scene was a set-up,” he said thoughtfully. “Trouble is, who did what? You say that Brenda Jones told you it was a man who rang down for help that night, but we have all this evidence of a girl being in the room, possibly the same one Stella Green told me about.”
“Which brings me to my contribution,” said Ormside. “We’ve identified the person whose prints were found all over the crime scene, as well as on the weapon.” He returned to his desk and picked up a printed sheet.
“Julia Rutledge. Age seventeen. Twenty-one Crabbe Lane, Tupton, Northamptonshire,” he read out. “Convicted on nine separate charges of theft. Failed to return home after leaving the detention centre two months ago. No outstanding warrant. We have pictures.” He passed them across the desk.
Paget and Tregalles studied them. The first one, presumably provided by the girl’s parents, showed a slight, fair-haired girl dressed in shorts and T-shirt, posing self-consciously against a garden wall. She was very thin and gangly, and looked to be about fourteen. The second photograph was a close-up head-and-shoulders shot against an off-white background. A police photograph. Her face had filled out a little, but her eyes looked enormous as they stared blankly into the camera. The third and fourth shots showed her face in profile. She looked very young and vulnerable, and yet there was a hint of defiance in the tilt of her chin.
Paget flipped through the information sheets. There was not even a suggestion of violence in any of the charges, but apparently the magistrate had thought them serious enough to send her to a youth detention centre for three months. Paget checked the dates. Nothing prior to a year ago.
“What’s this note?” asked Paget. “Review pending. Reference Section 79, Sub-section R49223-854, Case Number 7046-32.” He handed the sheet back to Ormside. “What’s that all about?”
The sergeant frowned. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay much attention to it,” he confessed. “Would you like it followed up?”
“It may not be important, but we might as well have as much information as possible on the girl. She has no record locally, I suppose?”
“Not under that name, no.”
Paget continued to study the picture. It was hard to imagine a kid like that mixed up in a brutal murder, but you could never tell by appearances. He turned to Tregalles. “You say you may have a lead on this girl?”
“That’s right. Assuming it’s the same girl, and I think there’s a good chance it is. Stella Green told me about a girl who calls herself Vikki Lane. She described her as a skinny kid who’s been staying with another prostitute by the name of Simone Giraud.
“I went round to the address she gave me, but neither of them were there. I spoke to another girl there, and she told me that Simone had gone to Shrewsbury on the bus this morning to do some shopping, but Vikki wasn’t with her. In fact, no one I spoke to admits to seeing Vikki since Saturday evening. Could be a coincidence that she disappeared about the same time that Bolen was killed, but I doubt it. I think we’re talking about the same kid.”
“So when will this Simone be back?” asked Paget.
“Don’t know for sure, but I have a policewoman waiting to pick her up as soon as she steps off the bus in Market Square.”
Paget nodded his approval. “Run the name ‘Vikki Lane’ through the computer first thing tomorrow morning,” he told Ormside, “and see if there’s a record of any charges under that name.” He looked at the clock and rose to his feet. “I’ll be in my office,” he continued, “but let me know when this woman is brought in. I’d like to hear what she has to say, myself.”