Sunday, June 25
One of the disadvantages of his position, contrary to what might have been expected, was that John Coffin was not always the first to know the news.
When Dr Angela Livingstone heard of the events in Feather Street, she felt alarmed, and even guilty. Was it her fault in any way? No, not so, surely not. She would like to have spoken to the Chief Commander John Coffin himself, as her spies told her that he was a nice man and eminently approachable. But protocol forbade it, the system had to be honoured even by one anxious to purge her soul. Even to a rebel who liked to stamp on the rules.
So she put aside any remaining hostility (and after all, the man had only made a pass at her, didn’t all policemen do it, one way or another?) and telephoned Superintendent Paul Lane at once.
His line was busy so she made a face at the telephone and got through to the hospital to find out how Leonard Zeman was.
‘Holding his own,’ she was told; she was well aware that this vague phrase might mean anything. You could be terminally ill and the ward sister would say this soothing nonsense.
But she knew one of the registrars there. ‘Can I speak to Dr Erskine? Say it’s Dr Angela Livingstone.’
‘Bleeping Dr Erskine,’ said the telephonist cheerfully. ‘He won’t be pleased, he was just going for a cup of coffee.’
Tough, thought Angela, and hung on. Very soon a sleepy voice said it had been up all night and what did Angela want?
‘Are you looking after Leonard Zeman?’
‘Not directly. Been observing the case.’ Leonard was a case, no longer a person. He would only become a person again if he recovered and left hospital, and not a fellow medical practitioner till he took up work again.
‘How is he? Really how is he?’
‘He is in a small side ward, with a policeman outside the door, and he is deeply comatose, but his blood pressure is rising. He may come out of it or he may not, your guess is as good as mine. Friend of yours?’
‘Only know him by name. What’s the diagnosis?’
‘Angel dear, did you drag me away from my coffee just to ask that?’
‘From the sound of it, you brought the coffee with you and are still drinking it.’
‘Up all night, dear. As to the diagnosis, you know my boss. Still sitting on the fence.’
‘Tell him to think about one of the glycosides.’
‘Good lord,’ said Perry Erskine. ‘You don’t say. I’ll pass it along. Get a Brownie point.’
‘Don’t quote me. But I feel guilty.’
‘Why! You didn’t give him an overdose, did you? Must have been a massive one, by the way.’
‘No, I didn’t, of course not, you fool.’
But maybe, she thought, as she put down the telephone, which was making noises about Why not dinner together, Angel, if I had been quicker in passing on the information about Val Humberstone, this need not have happened.
She was still young enough to think that somehow she could alter the course of events.
When she spoke to Superintendent Lane she was blunt: ‘If you have read my report on Val Humberstone, and I don’t know if you’ve had time yet, you will see I say she died from taking too much of one of the glycoside drugs.’
‘I have read the report, it’s on my desk now. Tell me what these glycosides are?’
‘They are given as a treatment for diseases of the cardiovascular system.’
‘Heart trouble, in other words?’
‘That’s right. In the quantity that I reckon the dead woman took them, they would produce heart failure, though.’
‘Just like that?’
‘No, probably not. She’d feel sleepy, begin to be unwell, the heart would become violently irregular, she would fall asleep and never wake up.’
‘I see. Not a common poison, is it?’
‘I don’t know if it’s ever been used before. You’d know more about that, perhaps. We might consult the Forensic Science people at Harrogate. They may know of other cases.’
‘I think I know of two others now,’ said Paul Lane. ‘You’d better have a look at Tim Zeman, and I think you’d better have a look at Mrs Kay Zeman. I’ll get an exhumation order.’
Without satisfaction, he contemplated the fact that he had a case of mass murder on his hands, a multiple poisoning, the wiping out of an entire family.
Paul Lane was an ambitious man who was keeping an anxious eye on the shape of his career: he had done well, but he wanted to do better. A badly run case at this stage in his professional life could spoil everything. There were a lot of ways you could fall off the ladder in the police and he knew most of them. Had fallen off a rung himself in the past, then climbed back on again, had seen colleagues fall off and never get back. He did not want to be one of them.
He was only too aware that a bright and hungry generation was coming up behind him. Women too. In his heart he hated the idea of women in the police, but it didn’t do to say so. He liked women, in many ways he liked them very much, but he did not want to compete with a woman.
There were nasty aspects to this case that he was as aware of as John Coffin. The media were already paying a lot of attention to the murder of Anna Mary Kinver. Every day there was a paragraph or a TV interview about it. There was tension bubbling away just below the surface in Leathergate and Spinnergate. Any day now, for any cause, it could spill over. A multiple poison case involving a family already named in the Kinver murder, already the subject of hostile speculation, might just do it.
Rationally, it shouldn’t, because the Zemans now looked more like victims, but reason did not come into civil disturbance.
One Zeman, however, remained totally unharmed.
‘These tablets,’ he said. ‘Only a doctor could prescribe them?’
‘Yes,’ said Angela Livingstone. She was still keeping to herself one vital piece of information of which she had not seen the significance. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘I hate to think of a doctor doing a poisoning. Old-fashioned of me, but there it is. Of course, we know they do it.’
‘Not many of them.’
‘We don’t get to know about the successful ones,’ said Lane gloomily. ‘However, patients can save up tablets, I suppose, and use them. Suicides do it, so murderers could. Right, so we shall have to start looking among our suspects for someone with heart trouble who is taking … what did you call it?’
‘Glycosides. Trade name: Digoxin.’
Paul Lane felt they were almost on speaking terms as he put the receiver down. How would it be if he asked her for a drink? Ring up with some query about drugs, and heaven knows he would probably have one, consult her, and take it from there. She was a nice woman, and there might be, really, if one was lucky, a special relationship.
Meanwhile, a case conference was called for that morning, Sunday though it was, in which he would be requesting that all the local doctors (with special reference to both the Zeman doctors) be asked about patients on Digoxin. He must practise saying the name.
He wrote on a pad in front of him: Digoxin.
In his experience, doctors were not inclined to be helpful about their patients. The Zeman record of prescriptions would have to be opened to him. He thought he could force that opening.
And doctors only handed out prescriptions, very few these days ran their own pharmacy. So there would be all the local chemists to question.
He had been one of the foot soldiers himself once, so had Archie Young and so had the top man himself, they all knew what that meant in the way of trudging around and asking questions and getting no answers or not the ones you wanted. But it had to be done.
As with the conference of all those concerned. This was now a Major Incident with everything it entailed in the way of Receivers, Indexers, Statement Readers and Action Allocators. He hoped the computers did not go down. All the computers, nationwide, Force to Force, were supposed to be able to speak to each other, but in his experience this did not always happen. He relied on the computers, you had to, a great tool, but when they failed you, it was as if you had ropes hobbling your feet.
In his time he had enjoyed the setting up of a MIRIAM room, now he was the overseer, a boss figure, and the mundane task of creating the room fell to the likes of Archie Young.
He called his wife and told her that he would be late back, not to expect him, he was sorry to miss Sunday lunch but she knew what was going on.
She did know. Mrs Lane always knew a bit more than he thought she did, she was an experienced police wife, an old hand at the game, she knew about the drinking parties, the odd woman, but she knew also about the grind, the strain, and the long hours of work. Provided he kept it under control, she adapted herself to it. She also had what she called her ‘little hobbies’ and one day, when it suited her, she would let him know about them. It made for give and take.
She loved her husband, but she feared for him in the violence that surrounded him in his work. It was a turbulent world he faced where the police were as often as not the victims. They had moved into Spinnergate when the new job came up, and although she enjoyed her sparkling bright flat with its views of the river, she sometimes felt nervous of the district outside. The children were grown up and away from home, she was on her own a lot. New riches and the memory of old poverties don’t make easy friends. The natives were definitely unfriendly.
So she washed her hair and took herself out. She had in any case not cooked Sunday lunch, gambling on Paul not being home.
By late afternoon Dr Leonard Zeman was conscious and able to talk. Archie Young went down to see him in his hospital room. A nurse stayed with him and a youthful doctor, called Erskine, hovered. Rather more closely than Inspector Young, who had a sergeant with him, thought necessary.
To the first question, Leonard Zeman said that he couldn’t seem to remember much, except beginning to feel ill, trying to telephone as well as wanting air.
Yes, he thought he might have done. Yes, he was sure he had. The dog was there with him, he remembered the dog.
‘The dog was seen on the doorstep, he couldn’t get back in. The milkman saw him and then found you. You probably owe it to the milkman that you are alive.’ A few hours more, the medical opinion had suggested, and recovery would have been unlikely.
‘You had a meal, Dr Zeman? You remember eating?’
‘Yes, I had supper with Tim.’ He had been told about his son, but Archie Young doubted if he had taken it in.
‘Do you remember what you had?’
Leonard Zeman seemed to dig into his memory. ‘We had cold soup, gazpacho. I remember the ice. Then a chocolate pudding. Then raspberries and cream. I think that was it.’
He lay back on his pillows. ‘I gather I was poisoned. From the questions you ask, you must think it was in the food.’
‘Just trying to establish just how you got it, Doctor.’
‘There won’t be any of the soup left. I poured it away. Might be some of the pudding. I don’t remember about it.’
‘There wasn’t.’
‘Timmy finished it up, I suppose.’
And got far more of the poison than you did, and hence died? Young thought. From the way Leonard Zeman spoke, Young guessed he had understood about his son.
‘I’d like to know what poison I’ve ingested. I’m trying to work out what it could have been.’
‘I wouldn’t bother with it, Dr Zeman.’
Leonard Zeman closed his eyes. He said: ‘Where’s my wife? Has she gone home? She was here, I know.’
The nurse spoke before Young could open his mouth. ‘All the time, Dr Zeman. When she saw you were going to be all right, we persuaded her to go home for some rest. You’re out of the wood now, you know.’
‘I ought to be with her.’
He had understood about his son, Young thought, and his mind was working on the problem with more sharpness with every minute that passed. He wasn’t in a happy position when it could be that either his wife or his son, who might have been a suicidal murderer, had poisoned him.
Young stayed for a while longer, asking a range of questions about the family and their habits, more to assess how they went on than from any hope of positive evidence one way or another. But the nurse started to make murmuring noises about tiring Dr Zeman, so he got up and left.
Leonard Zeman held out his hand and hung on to Young’s for a bit. ‘If I think of anything I’ll tell you.’
‘Thank you, sir. Anything. Be glad of it.’
When Inspector Young and his sergeant got outside, he found that someone had kicked the side of his car, damaging the paintwork.
Outside a hospital, he thought, and on a Sunday too.
As he drove back to his office, he saw a spiral of smoke in the distance. Fire-engines were already rushing that way.
Down by the river, he thought, or was it? As he drove the acrid smell of burning came up his nose. Perhaps nearer than the docks? He couldn’t be sure.
Definitely not a nice Sunday.