Tangled Web

Eleven

Cleef joined him at the bar and Gordon could see that the man was living on his nerves.

‘What will you have?’ he asked, trying to introduce a note of normality.

Cleef looked at him distantly as if drink was the last thing on his mind. ‘Err... pint of bitter,’ he said.

‘I was followed,’ said Cleef in a hoarse whisper. ‘That’s why I’m late — I had to give him the slip.’

Gordon found this melodramatic. ‘Followed? Are you sure? he asked handing over a five-pound note as the pint arrived.

Cleef waited until the barman had given Gordon his change before saying, ‘I’m sure all right. This guy was hanging about outside Prosser’s at knocking off time, and there he was again, standing across the road from my house when I left to come here. I walked around the block just to test him like, and sure enough, the bastard followed me. I had to nip up a lane and take him for a tour round the docks to lose him.’

‘But why would anyone want to follow you?’ asked Gordon.

‘It’s this Griffiths baby business,’ said Cleef, ‘I’m sure of it. I wish to Christ I’d blown the whistle at the time and been done with it.’

‘Go on.’

Cleef looked nervously around about him before saying, ‘Look, all I did was keep my mouth shut about the coffin being closed when I arrived. I didn’t know the kid wasn’t in it for Christ’s sake.’

‘Who asked you to keep your mouth shut?’

‘Dunno.’

‘You don’t know?’ exclaimed Gordon, his voice full of disbelief.

‘I’d never seen the guy before.’

‘It wasn’t one of the mortuary attendants, then?’

‘No, nothing to do with these guys — I know them well enough. They weren’t around when I got there. In fact, I was looking for them when this guy came up to me and asked what the problem was. I told him I was looking for someone to tell me why the Griffiths coffin was all closed up and he said it was nothing to worry about; they’d done it because they’d needed the space.’

‘What did you say to that?’

‘I told him they’d just have to open the bloody thing up again because I’d brought up the clothes the couple wanted their kid to wear for the funeral.’

Cleef paused and Gordon had to prompt him to go on.

Cleef looked sheepish. ‘He gave me a hundred quid to go away and keep my mouth shut — said there was no need for it to bother my conscience. The kid was dead, didn’t matter what she wore.’

‘You took the money?’

Cleef shrugged defiantly. ‘‘Course I took the money. Humping stiffs around doesn’t exactly put you at the top of the earnings league.’

‘So you took the money and brought the coffin back to Prosser’s without saying anything to anyone.’

Cleef nodded. ‘That’s it and now I wish to Christ I hadn’t.’

‘Can you describe this man?’

‘He was wearing hospital gear like a lot of them wear. You know...’

‘White coat or tunic and trousers?’

‘Tunic and trousers, mid-thirties, dark hair, tall — about the same height as me, but proper spoken like — sounded like a doctor.’

‘It’s really important that we identify this man. Can you think of anything else about him? Scars? Identifying marks? Anything at all that would be useful?’

Cleef shook his head. ‘I wasn’t with him for that long. ‘Nothing about him made much of an impression on me.’

‘Will you come up to the hospital with me and point him out?’

‘No bloody way,’ spluttered Cleef. ‘I don’t even like being here right now, talking about it with that bastard following me earlier on.’

Gordon could see that there would be no point in trying to persuade Cleef to change his mind; he was clearly scared. He tried another tack. ‘Even supposing you’re right about someone following you,’ he said, ‘there’s really nothing to suggest it has anything to do with what happened at the hospital, is there?’

‘What other reason could there be?’ Cleef retorted.

Gordon shrugged and made a few impromptu suggestions. ‘You don’t owe anyone money?’

Cleef shook his head.

‘You haven’t been seeing someone else’s lady?’

‘I wish,’ said Cleef.

Gordon had to admit that Cleef was not a front runner in the matinée idol stakes, so he changed tack again. ‘Maybe you’re just feeling guilty about having taken the money. It’s making you imagine you were being followed. Guilt can do that to people.’

Cleef became annoyed. ‘I’m telling you I was being followed,’ he insisted. ‘That wasn’t a bloody Jehovah’s witness chasing me round the docks!’

‘All right,’ said Gordon, ‘Do you think it was the same man who paid you?’

‘Don’t know. It was dark and he was well wrapped up. It could have been.’

‘Supposing I can lay my hands on some staff photos from the hospital, will you at least take a look at them and maybe point out the man?’

Cleef agreed. ‘But that’s as far as it goes,’ he warned.

The two men left the bar and parted company with Cleef saying that he was in the Harlech Arms on most nights; Gordon should seek him out there rather than by phoning or turning up at Prosser’s. Gordon agreed and walked back to the car, his eyes struggling to come to terms with the gloom and a damp mist that had come down after the rain.

He paused for a moment while unlocking the car door when he thought he heard someone cry out in the distance but there was nothing now save for the groan of a fog horn somewhere out on the Menai. He chided himself for feeling nervous but it wasn’t the nicest area to be in at night. There was no denying that it felt better to be inside the car and on the move again. His mind now turned to thoughts of food. He’d stop off and pick up a Chinese take-away before driving home.

Gordon phoned John Palmer’s solicitor, Roberts, in Bangor to ask how he should go about arranging a visit to see John; he did it between seeing two patients at morning surgery. Roberts hummed and hawed a good deal, but finally agreed to see what he could do. ‘I can make no promises,’ he warned.

‘Of course not,’ replied Gordon, adding silently inside his head, ‘Lawyers never can.’

Gordon slipped in another phone call between the next two patients, this time to ask Harcourt, the hospital manager at Caernarvon General about staff photographs.

‘All members of staff have their photograph attached to their personnel records, it’s part of our admin procedure,’ said Harcourt. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I’d like to see some.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘I’ve come up with a witness, someone who may be able to help with our inquiry,’ replied Gordon. ‘I don’t think I want to say any more than that at the moment.’

‘I see,’ replied Harcourt. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you spoke to our Human Resources Manager, Miss Edwards.’

Gordon was put through to a woman whose rich, deep voice suggested she probably made a fine contralto in some chapel choir. ‘If you’d like to come over to the office some time, Doctor, I’m sure we’ll do our best to help,’ she said.

Gordon explained that that wouldn’t be any good; he would have to take the photographs away, probably just for one evening. He heard the woman sigh and knew that this was obviously going to pose a problem.

‘The trouble is, the photos are actually attached to the personnel files through a special bonding process and the files themselves are confidential documents. We couldn’t let you take them away, I’m afraid.’

Gordon accepted this and tried to think of a compromise. ‘Maybe a photocopy of the photographs alone?’ he suggested.

‘That might be possible,’ conceded Miss Edwards slowly, in the manner of someone not overly enthusiastic about an idea. ‘What type of staff are you interested in, Doctor and how many photographs are we talking about here?’ she asked.

‘I’m not quite sure myself,’ Gordon confessed. ‘Let’s start with the staff of the pathology department and then maybe move on to the medical staff.’

‘All of them?’

‘Just the males.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Miss Edwards sounding definitely cooler than she had been at the outset. ‘Perhaps you could leave me a number and I’ll get back to you in due course.’

Gordon finished morning surgery and joined Julie for coffee before starting out on his rounds. She threw him the local morning paper as he sat down. ‘Want a look?’

‘Nothing concerning us I hope,’ said Gordon.

‘No, thank goodness. They’ve found another shock-horror story to occupy themselves with — a murder by the sound of it.’

Gordon sipped his coffee and glanced at the photograph on the front page; it suddenly filled him with foreboding as he recognised the riverside area up in Caernarvon. A man had been pulled from the river in the early hours of the morning and police were treating the death as suspicious. The dead man had been named as Maurice Cleef of Pont Street in Caernarvon; he had been seen drinking in a local dockside pub earlier in the evening. Police were anxious to interview anyone who’d seen him, especially the man he had been drinking with.

‘Is anything the matter?’ asked Julie. ‘You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.’

When he had recovered sufficiently from the initial shock, Gordon said, ‘It’s me — I’m the one they’re looking for. I was with Maurice Cleef last night.’

‘You!’ she exclaimed.

‘He works... he worked for Prosser’s.’ Gordon told her why he had agreed to meet him and how Cleef had thought he could identify the man who had interfered with Megan Griffiths’ coffin.

Julie shook her head and said, ‘You seem to have a talent for getting yourself mixed up in trouble. Do you want me to do your rounds for you while you sort out this mess?’

Gordon said not. ‘It’ll be OK, I’ll call in to the police station on the way back when I’ve finished. I can’t really tell them anything except that Cleef thought someone was following him and I didn’t believe him. I suggested it was his imagination. Wasn’t that just brilliant?’

‘I’m sure I would have said much the same thing,’ said Julie. ‘Being followed? It sounds like something from an episode of Inspector Morse. It’s all quite bizarre.’

‘That’s more or less what I suggested to Cleef but it looks as if he was right all along, poor sod.’

‘So what did happen to the Griffiths baby exactly?’ asked Julie.

‘That’s still a very good question,’ said Gordon. ‘The only thing I’m sure about is that it wasn’t just a simple mix-up.’ He said it calmly but his insides were turning over at the thought of Cleef’s murder. It had been a very long time since he’d felt this afraid — the last time had been when he’d slipped on a narrow ridge high up on a mountain and had just managed to save himself from falling. Now the feeling in his stomach was just the same.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Julie, noticing his sudden preoccupation.

‘I’m okay. I’d better start my rounds.’

Gordon found the interview with Chief Inspector Davies difficult. It was quite clear the man regarded him as a pest because of his earlier refusal to accept John Palmer’s guilt. ‘I might have known.’ he said when Gordon announced that he’d been the man in the pub with Cleef. ‘What in God’s name were you doing in a place like the Harlech?’

Gordon chose to tell the policeman as little as he possibly could, not out of a desire to obstruct or out of any feeling of animosity, but simply because he didn’t want a new scandal story to break which would affect the hospital adversely. He therefore didn’t tell him the details about Cleef’s involvement in the Griffiths baby affair, just that he thought he might have had some information that would have helped with the independent inquiry.

‘What sort of information?’ Davies persisted.

‘He wanted to assure me that neither of the two mortuary attendants were involved in the mix-up,’ said Gordon, feeling that this at least had an element of truth to it even if it was not the whole story.

Davies took down details of the meeting, noting the time they’d met and the time they’d parted, also the fact that Cleef felt he was being followed but that he had not said who by nor had he been able to suggest a reason.

‘But you say he was scared?’

‘Very,’ said Gordon.

‘That fits with what they said in the pub,’ said Davies. ‘Not like his old self at all,’ they said. ‘They thought it must have had something to do with the stranger he was with last night... you, Doctor.’

Gordon insisted that Cleef’s unease had had nothing to do with him.

‘Ah yes, it would have been down to the man who was following him...’ said Davies, deliberately introducing a note of sarcasm into his voice.

It annoyed Gordon. ‘I presume you are going to look for this man, Chief Inspector?’ he said. ‘Or are you going to sit on your backside just like you’ve been doing in the Palmer baby case?’

‘I’m sure we’re all very grateful for your input into police matters, Doctor,’ said Davies calmly. ‘In return might I suggest that any time you need medical advice, you just give us a call.’

Gordon regretted having lost his temper for now he’d also lost the bout with Davies on a technical knockout. He tried bridge building. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a chance that Cleef fell into the river on his own?’

‘Possibly he did,’ replied Davies evenly. ‘Right after somebody caved his head in with a heavy metal object.’

Gordon drove back over to Felinbach, harbouring a mixture of feelings inside him, none of them good. Cleef had definitely been murdered and, if he’d been right about the reason for his being followed, then it raised several unpleasant questions concerning his own safety. The fact that Cleef’s body had been found in the river posed a strong possibility that he’d actually been murdered down there which in turn, suggested that his attacker had been waiting for him when he’d come out of the Harlech last night. Where did that leave him if the murderer thought he’d been with Cleef all evening? Unless the killer was confident that Cleef hadn’t actually known him by name or what his function was at the hospital, he himself could well be next on the killer’s list as someone who might know the truth. Telling Chief Inspector Davies that wasn’t going to get him much sympathy, he reckoned. Davies might even find it amusing.

Gordon started to feel vaguely sick as he continued to think along these lines. He left braking a little too late at a roundabout, causing a car coming from his right to take evasive action. He looked the other way, pretending that nothing had been amiss but screeching tyres had given him away. His pulse was racing as he pulled into a lay-by a little further on and took a few deep breaths in an effort to calm down.

Maybe he was getting this whole thing out of proportion. There was still a chance that Cleef had been killed for a reason he knew nothing at all about. Just because the man had denied having any money or women problems didn’t automatically mean that that was so, or that there hadn’t been a whole lot of other bad things going on in his life. When it came right down to it, he knew nothing at all about Maurice Cleef. And this was North Wales, for God’s sake: not gangland Chicago.

It didn’t work. His gut instinct was telling him that things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got better. It was telling him that Maurice Cleef had been murdered to stop him identifying the man at the hospital, the dark-haired, well-spoken man — possibly a doctor — who had packed pathological waste into Megan Griffiths’ coffin in place of her body.

But why had he done that? The fact that murder was now involved suggested that there had to be more to this affair than just a clumsy attempt at covering up a mistake. It suggested that Megan Griffiths’ body had been stolen. It had been taken for a reason.

This was the first time Gordon had articulated this possibility. Although the idea had surfaced before, he had dismissed it in favour of a less dramatic explanation. Now he was faced with a sudden rise in the stakes, a move up from incompetence to crime, and a change from accidental mix-up to deliberate body snatching and murder. He couldn’t begin to imagine why anyone would want to steal the body of a cot-death baby but someone had — and was prepared to resort to bribery and murder in order to conceal their identity and motive.