Body Line

THIRTEEN

Bedside Manor

This part of Middlesex was simply lovely: gentle inclines, rich rolling pastures, fine mature trees, old hedgerows and wide verges. In the grounds of the Cloisterwood Hospital there was a prettily-shaped small lake, reed-fringed, from which skeins of ducks rose with joyful clamour. It looked like an eighteenth-century landed gentleman’s idea of the Garden of Eden.

Part of the hospital building – the part you first came upon down the long drive – was a white-stuccoed early Victorian house of large windows, tall chimneys and gracious aspect, presumably the country residence of the original owner of this artful landscape. The modern, functional buildings that had been added to turn it into a hospital had been politely tucked away at the back, as was the car park, which was full of BMWs, Mercedes and Audis, not to mention a generous sprinkling of Rollers and Bentleys. In the corner a discreet notice pointed the way to the staff car park, and Slider, feeling his common old car would look less out of place there, modestly followed it. Ah, this was better. Minis and Micros and Meganes, Golfs, Fiestas and Focuses, and even a couple of MPVs, together with a fair and reasonable degree of scruffiness and dilapidation, allowed him to park with more confidence.

Webber’s office was in the old building, and he was shown into it by a slight, pretty girl in a lavender uniform dress and told that Sir Bernard would be with him very shortly. Slider anticipated a power-wait, but in fact it was only two or three minutes, barely time to take himself to the window and look out over the parkland to the lake, before the door opened behind him and a voice said, ‘Nice view, isn’t it? Even lovelier when the chestnuts come into bloom.’

Slider turned. Given Webber’s eminence, status, and connections, Slider had been quite prepared to dislike him. He had expected cold briskness, arrogance, finger-drumming impatience with Slider’s inferiority and the waste of valuable time he represented. But the Webber approaching him across the room was perfectly relaxed and smiling, holding out his hand with such an air of cordiality that Slider shook it without even a momentary shrinking.

‘One of the perks of my position here,’ Webber went on, joining Slider at the window. ‘I got to choose my own office. I’ve worked in so many modern buildings – and of course no one wants to house the medical side of things in old buildings. But an office like this was always my dream. We had to adapt the house to a certain extent, but I think we did it tactfully – don’t you? You see how we matched the mouldings and cornice – that’s actually a false wall there. And the door is a copy.’

While obediently looking at the things that were being pointed out, Slider was getting a look at Webber himself. He was a little taller than Slider, but not a tall man; fifty-six, as Slider knew, but well preserved, with only a little tell-tale thickening of the body to betray him. His hair was thick and wavy, brown sprinkled so attractively with silver it might have been deliberate. His face was firm-fleshed, authoritative and genial, and, if not exactly handsome, near enough to it to be deemed so with the aid of his fine clothes and immaculate toilette. The eyes, crinkled often in smiles, were a faded blue and very clear, as if their owner were a clean-living outdoorsman. With the natural-looking, light tan of the skin and the capable hands, it made Slider think of him at the helm of a racing yacht.

But the best thing of all was the voice, deep, warm and with a perfect accent – clean English but not over-posh – inspiring absolute confidence. It was the sort of voice you wanted to hear on a 747 saying, ‘This is the captain speaking.’

Architecture was one of Slider’s interests, and he was happy to allow Webber to tell him a little about the history of the house in the few minutes before the door opened and another slim, pretty girl in the same uniform came in with a tray.

‘Ah, tea,’ Webber said with an air of rubbing his hands. ‘I took the chance that you would have a cup with me. Unless you would prefer coffee?’

‘Tea is fine, thank you.’

Webber led the way to an armchairs-and-coffee-table configuration to one side of the room, where the girl was laying it out and pouring for them. Georgian silver teapot, fine china, and there was a plate of shortbread as well. Slider sipped his tea: it was good.

Webber, looking at him for his reaction, said, ‘Kenya. I alternate with Darjeeling, but you’ve caught me on my Kenya day. I take my afternoon cup quite seriously, you see. It’s the only way to treat the king of beverages.’

Slider put down his cup and smiled politely, suddenly wondering why all this charm was being expended on a lowly policeman. As if he had heard the thought, Webber let the smile go in favour of a serious look, and said, ‘Well, I’m sure you’re a busy man, and I know I am, so perhaps we should get on with it. Would you like to tell me why you’ve come to see me?’

Given that Slider was from Shepherd’s Bush, Webber must have known the subject for debate, but he said, ‘I’m looking into the death of David Rogers. I believe he was a friend of yours.’

Webber looked sad, but not heartbroken. ‘Poor David! It’s a shocking business. Yes, we were friends and colleagues some years ago. I was a mentor of sorts to him in the early days, and we worked together at one time, but we’ve rather drifted apart in recent years.’

‘Why would that be?’ Slider asked.

‘Why did we drift apart? What an odd question! Why does it ever happen? The human condition is fluid, friendships form and break, lives go off in opposite directions. One wakes up one day and finds oneself in a different place with different people.’

Slider cut through this happy horseshit. ‘Was it because of the trouble he got into? The scandal over a patient?’

Webber looked put out by the bluntness. ‘Not directly. I didn’t drop him, you know. In fact, I did everything I could to help him.’

‘You represented him with the GMC,’ Slider suggested.

‘Not precisely that, but I used my influence there. Otherwise the outcome could have been much worse for him.’

‘Why would you do that?’ Slider asked. ‘Why protect a doctor who molests a patient? Surely there are ethical considerations which must override friendship?’

Webber blinked and put down his teacup. ‘That’s very blunt. If not a touch hostile.’

‘I didn’t mean to be hostile,’ Slider said. ‘I’m trying to understand the situation.’

‘Well, I don’t see what it has to do with David’s death, but I’ll tell you: David vehemently denied any wrongdoing, and at the time I wasn’t convinced that the woman hadn’t made a mistake. She was only half awake, and may have misunderstood what David was doing, or she may have exaggerated, or even made it up entirely, to get attention. I have to tell you there are a lot of women like that – or perhaps I don’t have to.’ He looked enquiring. ‘I imagine policemen meet them as well.’

‘I understand you got him a job afterwards.’

The washed-blue eyes sharpened. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Someone who was a friend of his at the time.’

‘Who?’

Slider didn’t answer that. ‘Did you, in fact, get David Rogers a job?’ he insisted.

Webber seemed reluctant to admit to this act of kindness. ‘I – again, I used such influence as I had to promote his chances of obtaining a position. It couldn’t be directly in medicine, but there was a pharmaceutical company looking for someone on the PR side – someone who understood how doctors think, who could advise on advertising and promotional campaigns. David had all the right qualifications: he was young, personable, intelligent. Sadly, however, he didn’t stick at it. I think he was there about a year or eighteen months before he left. I don’t know what he did after that. I lost contact with him entirely. I’ve no idea what he’s been doing in recent years.’

‘So when did you last see him or speak to him?’

‘I can’t remember. Not for years.’

‘You disapproved of his leaving?’

‘I was – disappointed. I’d gone to some trouble to help him and I felt he should have stuck at it. But perhaps he had a better prospect somewhere, I don’t know.’

‘So you didn’t offer him a position here?’

‘Here, at Cloisterwood? No, he has never been on the payroll here.’

‘He seems to have told people he worked here.’

Webber looked grave. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. We depend greatly on our good name and – look, I’ll be frank with you. At the time of David’s trouble I believed his protestations of innocence. But since that time, I’ve rather changed my opinion. His reputation with women – his shabby treatment of his wife – his unreliability. It’s all of a piece. He didn’t seem to be able to resist women, and I’ve come to believe that that poor Mrs – what was her name? Lindsey? Leicester?’

‘Lescroit.’

‘That’s it. I’m afraid that she was probably right all along, and I feel bad about having persuaded her away from making charges. David wasn’t to be trusted, either with women or a job. It’s a great pity, because he was a talented surgeon. But I couldn’t possibly have someone so unreliable associated with my establishment here.’

‘I see,’ Slider said. It seemed he had stumbled into another dead end. Rogers had merely been boasting, borrowing his old friend-and-mentor’s success to make a rather dim bird. Shabby. Yet he had been doing something that pulled in the readies.

He tried a curve ball. ‘Can you tell me something about the Windhover Trust?’

There was no flicker in Webber’s face. He looked politely enquiring. ‘Windhover Trust? I don’t know it.’

‘It’s a branch of the Geneva Medical Support and Research Foundation.’

‘Ah. Well, I have heard of them, vaguely, but I’ve no idea what they do. I don’t have any dealings with them.’

‘In what way have you heard of them, then?’

‘I’ve seen the name somewhere – in a medical journal, perhaps. Usually these grand-sounding foundations are connected with the drugs companies. There is very large money to be made in pharmaceuticals, with government spending involved. Think of what was spent on Swine Flu vaccine during the last panic. Aids and malaria programmes run into billions. I expect that’s where you’ll find its activities concentrated.’ He put down his cup, empty now, with an air of finality. ‘Well, if there’s nothing more I can help you with?’

‘Not at the moment.’

The farewell handshake was being offered now. ‘If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to ask,’ Webber said, guiding Slider gently towards the door. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help catch the killer. For all his faults, David was a very loveable man, and a good doctor. I’m sad and dismayed at what has happened.’

A good doctor gone bad: that was the verdict. So Slider thought as he made his way out through the luxurious surroundings, which bore no resemblance to a hospital – well, they weren’t supposed to, were they? The wide front hall, with its reception desk and seating areas and floral arrangements, looked like the foyer of a very exclusive country hotel. A man in fine Arab robes was standing impassively in the middle of the floor. A thin, anxious man who was obviously his assistant or courier was talking to a receptionist at the desk while three of his wives sat resignedly on the reproduction Empire chairs and a chauffeur carried in amusingly copious luggage from the enormous Rolls Royce just outside.

Slider stepped round the sheik, who did not deign to notice he was in the way, and made his way back to his car, which was looking more of a carbuncle every minute. There was money to be made in medicine all right, and it was evident the Cloisterwood Hospital had found one way of doing it. David Rogers had presumably found another, but what was it? Cloisterwood was a washout. But there had to be something, some connection, with Stanmore. If the answer wasn’t here, he didn’t know where next to look for it. He got in his car, reaching the exit at the same time as an MPV which, surprisingly, stood back for him to go first – not what you expected of MPVs, especially when they were black S line Audi Q7s with blacked-out windows. Surely there should be another word for this kind of four-by-four, some title to suggest their sleek, powerful and threatening street presence. MPV was too school-run-mum. Must be the staff motor for the Arab gentleman, he thought. Or maybe transport for inferior wives. A man of that wealth would want the best even for the last car in his cavalcade. What it must be not to have to count the cost of anything, thought Slider, who had never in his life even flown business class, let alone first.

He had to stop for petrol, and took the opportunity to ring the factory to see if anything had happened. ‘Yes,’ said Atherton. ‘Something has. A bloke rang, says he’s a solicitor and he’s got something to tell about David Rogers. Seemed a bit cagey about it. Wants someone to go round.’

‘Tell him to come in,’ said Slider. ‘Where is he?’

‘Harrow.’

‘Oh. Well, I’m practically there,’ Slider said. ‘I suppose I could drop in on my way past.’

‘You sound glum. Webber no good?’

‘He was perfectly charming, but he says Rogers didn’t work for him and he hasn’t seen him or spoken to him for years. Disapproves of his womanizing.’

‘Brings the game into disrepute, eh?’ said Atherton. ‘So it’s another dead end?’

‘Took the words out of my mouth.’

‘Then you need a bit of cheering up. I was going to see the solicitor myself, but you have him, with my blessing.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Slider, with irony.

‘It may not be another dead red herring end,’ Atherton reasoned.

‘Likewise it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Give me the name and address.’

It was actually in Harrow Weald, and very easy to find: Slider turned off the A410 Uxbridge Road into the High Road, and there it was, on the left, opposite the bus depot, above a shop. It was very eye-catching, the London stock bricks having been cleaned of generations of soot so that it was the only upper storey in the terrace that was pale yellow instead of black. The name was painted on the window in large letters in black outlined in white, two words one above the other, curve and reverse curve so they made an open circle: MARICAS SOLICITOR. He wasn’t taking any chances on losing trade because someone couldn’t locate him.

Slider parked the car and walked back to the door, hospitably open, between a Chinese takeaway and a betting shop. Upstairs there were two offices, the reception office being the one with the painted window. Here a middle-aged woman wearing a heavy cardigan over her shoulders was typing so vigorously the empty sleeves swung and jiggled to the movement. She looked up with polite and friendly enquiry as Slider entered.

‘Mr Maricas? He’s expecting me. My name’s Slider.’

‘Oh, right.’ She came out from the desk and led Slider back down the passage to the closed door of the back room. She tapped and opened it. ‘Mr Slider for you,’ she announced.

The room couldn’t have been a greater contrast to Webber’s antique-furnished, thick-carpeted, gracious hidey hole. There was lino on the floor, a cheap, battered desk that looked as if it had been bought second-hand, some very incommodious office chairs, one with a large stain on the seat and the other with a cigarette hole, a table covered in box files and folders, and a plethora of filing cabinets, standing around awkwardly in every available space like people at a badly organized party given by someone they didn’t know very well. The window was smaller than the one at the front and so dirty that Slider could get no idea of what it looked over.

The man behind the desk stood up and shoved his hand out eagerly. ‘Henry Maricas,’ he said. Slider shook it – it would have been churlish not to – thinking this had been a bad day for someone who didn’t like touching members of the public. ‘Can I get you some coffee or something?’ Maricas offered with automatic hospitality.

‘Nothing, thanks. I’ve just had some tea.’

‘Oh. OK. Well, do sit down.’

Slider chose the seat with the hole in it – you never knew what that stain might be – and said, ‘You wanted to see me?’

Henry Maricas was younger than Slider had expected – probably in his thirties, but he looked even younger, because of his thin, eager face and the silky mouse-coloured hair worn a little too long, so that the forelock flopped schoolboyishly forward over his brow and had to be shoved back every now and then. His skin was transparently pale, so that you could almost see the blood running about under it, and his eyes, surprisingly, were very dark, almost black, and fringed with thick dark lashes. His suit looked rather worn and crumpled, and his long-fingered, knuckly hands looked grubby, but given the amount of dust lying around this room it was hardly surprising. When he had stood up, he had towered over Slider – a good six foot three, he thought – but he was too thin for his height, which added to the air of gawky youth. He was, indeed, so thin that Slider wondered if his business was not doing well enough to support him. But his accent was pure Eton-and-Oxford, and there was something about his manner which gave Slider the impression of one of a long line of legal beagles, a son who had gone into the family profession as a matter of course.

‘Well, not you specifically,’ Maricas said with an apologetic smile, ‘because I didn’t know you existed, so to speak, but someone from the case. The David Rogers case, I mean.’ And he glanced at the door as if to check that it was closed.

‘I am the investigating officer,’ Slider said, exuding calm. He felt absurdly fatherly already towards this nice young man. ‘I’d be happy to hear anything you have to say about David Rogers.’

Maricas nodded. ‘First I have to explain to you that I’ve been away – on holiday, in fact, skiing in Davos – my family always goes at this time of year. I only came back this morning, which was why I didn’t know anything about it – about Dr Rogers being dead. There’s only me and Maggie – my secretary –’ he nodded towards the other office – ‘and she didn’t know anything about my dealings with him so she didn’t alert me. It was only when I was looking through the papers today – she keeps them for me when I’m away, so I can check on anything that’s come up – that I saw the report that he’d been killed. Otherwise I’d have come forward right away.’ He frowned. ‘Or, I suppose I would. It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do when it’s a case of murder. It was murder – I mean, there’s no doubt?’

‘There’s no doubt, I’m afraid.’

He gnawed a finger. ‘Then I suppose I ought to tell you first, before I do anything about it.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what your relationship was with Dr Rogers?’ Slider helped him along. He used that title since it seemed to be what Rogers had used with Maricas.

He pulled himself together. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll tell you the story from the beginning. You see, Dr Rogers came to see me about eight months ago. He was a walk-in – said he’d seen my sign from the road, and that he wanted someone to draw up his will.’

‘His will? You have his will?’ Slider couldn’t help himself. The whole business about the next of kin had been dragging at them since the beginning.

‘Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. He’d brought in his previous will, which left everything to his first wife—’

‘Amanda Sturgess.’

‘That’s right. But he’d divorced her and remarried and wanted to make sure his new wife would get his estate rather than Ms Sturgess. I explained to him that his old will would automatically be nullified by his remarriage, and that unless he had children or other relatives, his second wife would automatically inherit. But of course it’s always better to have it written down, and he said that’s what he wanted. He didn’t want there to be any doubt about it. So I made up the document for him. He didn’t have any other relatives, as it happened, so it was very simple, just leaving everything to his current wife.’

‘I didn’t know he had one,’ Slider said. Maricas handed the will to him across the desk, and he read it. It revoked all previous testamentary dispositions, named Henry John Duval Maricas as his sole executor, and left all his property, whatsoever and wheresoever situate, to his wife, Helen Marie Aldous of 23 Station Approach, Southwold.

Southwold. Southwold as in Suffolk. Now they had the Suffolk connection. Slider looked up. ‘The next of kin. You don’t know the trouble we’ve been to, trying to find out who his next of kin was. His ex-wife offered to arrange the funeral because we didn’t know of anyone else. Are you telling me this person doesn’t know about Rogers’s death yet?’

Maricas looked unhappy. ‘Well, I haven’t told her. I’ve explained why. If it had been a normal death or an accident I would have got on to her straight away today, as soon as I knew, but in the circumstances I thought I’d better speak to you first.’

‘I wonder she hasn’t contacted you.’

‘She may not know he’s dead yet. Not everyone reads the papers, you know. Or he might not have told her about me. People can be very funny about wills. They don’t like to think they’ll ever be needed.’

‘But I suppose he had a copy of it,’ Slider said. ‘I wonder why we didn’t find it. We had all the papers out of his house. His London house, I mean – presumably he owns the one in Southwold.’

‘He bought it, but he’d already gifted it to his wife, so it’s hers now.’

Hollis had been right, Slider thought. There was a whole other establishment – the ‘house in the country’. Probably all his missing gubbins were there. ‘Perhaps he keeps his copy of the will there,’ he said.

‘He told me that he was putting a copy in his safe at home. I just assumed he meant Hofland Crescent, because that’s the address he gave me as his. Southwold was always “my wife’s house”.’

‘We didn’t find a safe,’ Slider said, more to himself than to Maricas.

‘Presumably it was a concealed one,’ said Maricas, smiling a little, but still looking anxious. ‘He was a very cautious person.’

Slider nodded. They hadn’t stripped the house, because there had seemed to be no reason for it. If there was a safe there, what else might they find in it?

‘I haven’t told you everything yet,’ Maricas went on. ‘He said the reason he had come to me for the will was that he didn’t dare go to anyone who knew him. He insisted that I must keep the whole business secret. I had to type it out myself, and when he came to sign it, he came in a taxi and brought the taxi driver up to be the other witness. He didn’t want Maggie to witness it because he said he didn’t trust women. “They always talk,” he said.’

‘But why all the secrecy?’ Slider asked. ‘Did he explain that?’

‘He said –’ and here Maricas looked faintly apologetic – ‘that he was involved in important but dangerous work, and that there were people who might attack him through his wife if they knew of her existence.’

‘That’s a bit James Bond,’ Slider said.

‘I know, that was my thought too,’ said Maricas, ‘but he seemed quite sincere about it. I’m sure he believed it. I said if someone was threatening him he should go to the police, and he said that would be fatal. They mustn’t know he was wary of them, he said. And he said he was trying to get himself out of it, but it would take time and be difficult and dangerous, because everyone knew what the fate of whistle-blowers was.’

‘Whistle-blowers?’

‘That’s what he said. He wouldn’t tell me anything about what he was involved in, and frankly, although I believed him at the time, because he was obviously nervous, afterwards I thought he must be making it up. Exaggerating for effect, you know – to make himself important. But now—’ He looked seriously into Slider’s eyes, his own brown ones troubled. ‘But now, it looks as though he wasn’t kidding. I mean, someone cared enough about what he was doing to kill him.’

‘Yes,’ said Slider. And he thought about that single bullet to the back of the head. Too professional. Amanda had said there was a woman at the bottom of it, but it was much more likely to be money, wasn’t it? Putting aside the secret agent notion, had he been involved in some illegal but lucrative business, lucrative enough to kill him if he looked likely to pull the plug on it? But what the heck was it?

‘I feel so bad that I didn’t believe him,’ Maricas said. ‘So you see why I thought I should speak to you before I did anything?’

‘Yes, I think you did quite right,’ Slider said, and Maricas looked relieved.

‘He was very worried for his wife – afraid for her. He thought they’d go after her to get at him. He said no one knew about her and it had to stay that way. She even kept her maiden name so no one would connect her with him. So I was worried that if I contacted her now it might somehow draw attention to her. But she’ll have to be told – if she doesn’t know already. And other people will have to know, if the will is to go through probate. I mean, she won’t get his money until then, and he must have wanted her to have it, or why the will?’

‘It’s a tricky problem, I see that,’ said Slider. And he thought of Cat Aude. If the witness who was no witness had been murdered, in how much more danger was a wife? He might not have told his wife all about his ‘business’, of course, but the murderer or murderers wouldn’t care about that. They’d eliminate her anyway, just to be on the safe side. ‘You have no idea what it was he was involved in?’

‘No, he never said. Didn’t so much as give a hint.’

‘And do you think he told his wife about it?’

‘I don’t know. Really, I have no idea. I suppose if anyone knows, it would most likely be her. But he went to such pains to keep her secret, maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to burden her with the knowledge.’

‘And “women always talk”,’ Slider mused.

Maricas gave a quick, unhappy smile. ‘So what’s to be done?’

‘You’ll have to leave it with me,’ Slider said. ‘Say nothing to anyone about this.’

‘I’ve kept his secret this far. You can trust me.’

‘I know I can,’ Slider said.

‘But what will you do?’ Maricas asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know yet. Once we have the murderer behind bars, I think Rogers’s wife will be safe.’

‘But how will you catch him?’

I haven’t the foggiest, Slider thought. But what he said was, ‘We are following up lines of investigation.’