Gallery Whispers

65

Bob Skinner swivelled in his own familiar chair and gazed out of his office window. He smiled as he looked down the driveway which led to the main entrance of the headquarters building, watching the rush of the arriving staff, uniformed, CID and civilians, the third category having grown in numbers during the later years of Sir James Proud's reign.

As he watched the scene, the Chief Constable's Vauxhall Omega, driven by Lady Proud, rolled slowly up towards the doorway. Sir James emerged from the passenger side, with a brief nod to his wife.

It would have been out of character for him to kiss her goodbye in front of his office, and completely unprecedented for him to do so while in uniform.

'Excuse me, sir.' He swung round in his chair at the sound of Ruth McConnell's voice. Even although she had been only a few feet away across the corridor, he had missed his long-haired, long-legged secretary while he had been filling the Chief's shoes.

'Sorry, Ruthie. Didn't hear you come in. I was admiring the view.'

She smiled back at him. 'Your morning meeting,' she said. 'The men are here, and Sarah's just arrived as well.'

'Christ,' Skinner muttered, rising to his feet. 'Don't keep my wife waiting. Is she looking okay?'

Ruth stared back at him, puzzled. He had told no one in the office, other than Andy Martin and the Chief, of Sarah's pregnancy. 'Morning sickness,' he explained briefly, watching her eyes widen, just as he stepped past her.

'Come away in, everyone,' he called into the corridor. One by one, they filed in and took seats around the low coffee table: Sarah, Brian Mackie, Clan Pringle and Stevie Steele, the young sergeant looking very slightly nervous to be in the vaulted heights of headquarters.

'It's nine o'clock,' he said. 'These days Sarah and I don't drink coffee this early, so you gentlemen can do without as well.

'I've called this meeting, and I'm running it, rather than Mr Martin, because he's asked me to give an overview of the investigation, and because he's snowed under with the security work for next month's conference. I've asked Sarah to come along since she's done the path. work in both cases, and since she was at the first murder scene.' He suppressed a smile; Skinner could never admit it to his men, but his wife's presence on an investigation team always gave him added confidence, such was his respect for her abilities.

'I've been reading the file on the Weston death. It seems to me that there are only two leads left: the mysterious Mr Deacey, and the DNA trace which Arthur Dorward turned up and which may or may not have been left by the person who helped Mrs Weston take her life.

After the disappointment of the bogus Deacey, and the serious injury to Maggie Rose, both of those are stalled for the moment.' He looked at Pringle. 'Clan, give us an update on Murray.'

Bob Skinner never encouraged formality, but often there was something about him which simply inspired it. 'Very good, sir.' The thick-set superintendent nodded, and straightened in his seat as if coming to a form of attention. 'We've finished talking to the neighbours; none of them saw or heard anyone come and go. That's hardly surprising. Murray's house is in a cul-de-sac, and there's nobody directly across the road.

'I have a report from Inspector Dorward.' He glanced at Mackie, relaxing slightly. 'He hasna' been as helpful this time, Brian. There were no prints at all on the black tape. It was a brand new roll, of the sort you can buy in any DIY place. He even went over the tape that was taken from round Mr Murray's neck, after it was removed and sent to him. Not a trace. It was the same wi' the kitchen scissors.

Arthur says that must mean they had been wiped, for there were bound to have been old traces on them.'

'And the syringe?' asked Skinner.

'Clean too, sir.'

'What about its packaging?' Sarah put the question quietly, but the two superintendents looked round as if it had been fired at them.

Pringle frowned. 'What packaging?'

'The sterile packaging from the syringe; the container for whatever drug was used.'

The superintendent shook his head. 'We never found any, Sarah.'

'No,' she said. 'Nor did I expect it. The assistant… let's call him that… was a bit more devious than at the first death, leaving the tape, scissors and syringe, but he couldn't have left the packaging.

Those items would have had batch numbers on them that would have led you straight to him.'

'Do you have any other thoughts at this stage?' Skinner asked.

'Just this,' his wife responded. 'This person is a doctor, or some sort of paramedic. In each case the needle went straight into a vein in the thigh: upwards because that's the least awkward way, when you're injecting someone. A lay person might have been lucky once, but not twice, not nohow.

'Finding a vein for a needle is quite a skill. Some people are good at it, and some ain't. And it doesn't matter whether you're a doctor or a nurse. I've known middle-aged GPs spend five minutes prodding about with a needle trying to take a blood sample, and I've seen junior nurses who could slip a transfusion line into a vein inside five seconds, every time.

'Whoever administered these injections had that sort of skill.

Gaynor Weston was a young, well-fleshed woman; her veins would not have been easy to bring up. Anthony Murray had been bombarded by drugs — so much so that the lab couldn't pinpoint what was used to help his death — and his were very fragile. Yet the injection in each case was done clean as a whistle. I'd have been proud of them.'

She looked at the two superintendents. 'I'd say that narrows down your search quite a bit.'

'More than you think,' said Pringle. 'It points to one person, in fact. Staff Nurse Andrina Paterson.'

'Who's she?' asked Sarah.

'Anthony Murray's niece… and Raymond Weston's girlfriend.

We'd never have known of that connection had clever young Stevie here not asked the right question at the right time.'

Skinner nodded. 'Yes indeed. Well done, Stevie. Some day, son, you're going to make a mistake, but I'm not going to spend my life waiting for it.

'So what do we do about this? We could pull the girl in and sweat her, right away. But I think not; not at this stage, at least. Just let's keep an eye on her, and try to make sure that she's got no other friends or relatives who are terminally ill.

'We've had our lucky break at the start. Let's keep it on ice and do the rest of the proper police work. Clan, you and Steele complete the rest of the interviews; talk to the cleaner, talk to the out patient visitors, talk to the consultant. See what they can tell you about Mr Murray, see whether he told them anything about his niece which might corroborate her intention to help him do this.

'Meanwhile, Brian, you go back and check up on young Raymond Weston. I know his mother wrote him a letter, but that could be a smoke screen. Find out whether he really did go out on the piss with his pals on the night of his mother's death.'

'Can I say something, sir,' asked Stevie Steele, diffidently.

'Of course.'

The sergeant nodded. 'Thank you, sir. I just thought, this might be corroboration of a sort. The differences between the two scenes; the way the tape, scissors and syringe were left behind the second time, all over the body: I mean, that's pretty specific. The "assistant" surely didn't guess that from the little that was in the papers after Mrs Weston died. It says to me that they were pretty close to the investigation… that they might have had a whisper of what was going on.'

'Oh Jesus, yes,' Brian Mackie exclaimed. 'And Nolan Weston knew, didn't he, straight from us. What's the betting that he told his son… and he told his girlfriend?'

'At the moment, superintendent,' said Skinner, 'I'd say it's a shade of odds on. But let's make sure there are no other horses in the field before we place our bets.'