White death

FIVE

It was raining when Steven’s flight touched down at Edinburgh airport and the chill wind that caught the side of his face when he stepped out from the aircraft brought back memories of times past in Scotland’s capital. He had mixed feelings about the city. He’d had some good times here with Lisa when they’d come through from Glasgow — as they often had — to visit theatres and galleries but he’d also had some bad when past investigations had brought him into conflict with people who could only be described as plain evil. Glasgow, where he and Lisa had lived for a while, wore its heart on its sleeve while Edinburgh hid its face behind net curtains.

A poster on the wall of the terminal building proclaimed Scotland as the ‘best small country in the world’ while a series of overweight and unsmiling ground staff wearing fluorescent waistcoats herded passengers into snaking queues and shouted at them to keep mobile phones turned off.

‘What the hell do they want this time?’ grumbled the man in the queue beside Steven. ‘Boarding pass? Passport? Shoe size? Inside leg measurement?’

Someone else in the queue whispered, ‘Passport.’ And the fact that she’d whispered it made Steven realise just how much people had come to fear and dislike authority in airports. Security — or imagined security — had no sense of humour at all and common sense was an alien concept to those charged with implementing it. Anyone displaying dissent would end up in very serious trouble. This in itself was a terrorist victory of sorts.

‘Where to?’ asked the taxi driver.

‘Fraoch House in Pilrig Street,’ replied Steven, reading from the note he had in his pocket.

The driver drove without comment, something that suited Steven as he’d had more than enough of taxi drivers’ philosophy over the years. Silence was just fine. He could enjoy the sights instead of listening to a treatise on the Iraq war or the virtues of proclaiming Scotland an independent nation, not that the sights today were particularly welcoming but maybe that was the rain. Everywhere looked nice in sunshine. Anywhere could be depressing in the wet.

The driver uttered his first words as they came to a roundabout at the head of Leith Street when a woman driving a 4x4 swung out in front of him. ‘Bloody loony! No wonder she needs a 4x4 to keep her arse safe!’

Steven didn’t comment and silence was resumed until they pulled up outside Fraoch House. ‘There you go.’

Steven paid the driver and tipped him well. This brought a smile that looked like an unnatural act.

‘Steven Dunbar.’

‘Gavin Houston,’ said the smiling young man at the desk. ‘Welcome. I’ll show you to your room.’

Steven had been a bit apprehensive about what a B amp;B that Jean Roberts and her sister enthused about might turn out to be, but the place was clean, modern and comfortable. It even had wireless broadband available which he used to connect his laptop to Sci-Med to check for any messages. There were none.

Despite having given it some thought, Steven had not yet decided on his first move in the investigation. He wanted to avoid crossing swords with the local police but didn’t think that should be a real problem: they had already written Scott Haldane’s death off as suicide and closed the book on it. They would have no great inclination to take what his wife was saying seriously. He lay down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling while he thought through his options.

Judging by what he’d learned from the files, Scott Haldane’s widow, Linda, might not be the best person to interview first. She was clearly unwilling to even consider the possibility of her husband having committed suicide. Virginia Lyons’ daughter, Trish, was currently very ill in hospital so the fate of their GP would not be uppermost in her mind. That just left the medical practice where Haldane had worked. Steven thought he might be able to get a feeling for what had gone on in the disagreement over Trish Lyons’ treatment by speaking to someone there and perhaps get someone to throw some light on ‘green sticker’ patients while he was at it.

A phone-call later and Steven had arranged to meet with Dr James Gault at the practice in Bruntsfield after evening surgery. Bruntsfield was a part of the city that Steven knew well — a nice area about a mile south of the city centre and about three miles from where he was at the moment. Seeing that it had stopped raining, he decided to walk there. It would give him the chance to re-acquaint himself with the city and also afford him some exercise at the end of a travel day with all the enforced inertia that had entailed — especially as it would be uphill all the way.

Steven was a little too early when he reached Bruntsfield Links, the pleasant, green area near to the street where the surgery was located, so he sat down on a park bench and watched the world go by for a few minutes. A child’s ball landed at his feet and he picked it up to return it to the child who came to retrieve it but stopped some distance away. ‘Hello,’ he said.

The child gave him a suspicious look and snatched up the ball when Steven rolled it to him. His mother called out and it was possible to pick out the anxiety in her voice. He thought it sad that speaking to anyone in the park was a definite no-no for children these days. Steven got up and started to walk towards the surgery, wondering whether the threat to children now was really any greater than it had been in the past or was it perhaps just the perception of it that had changed? He suspected the latter but there was no time to ponder any longer. He’d reached the front door of the surgery.

‘What can I do for Sci-Med?’ asked James Gault, examining Steven’s ID and settling back in his chair.

‘I’d appreciate hearing your views on Scott Haldane’s suicide. You must have known him well?’

‘I did… or at least I thought I did. It was as big a shock to me as it seems to have been to everyone else. I would have thought he’d be the last person on earth to take his own life. He had everything to live for.’

‘That’s what I keep hearing,’ said Steven. ‘No skeletons in the cupboard?’

‘None that I know of. I always found him a perfectly straightforward chap who cared deeply about his patients — more than me if truth be told,’ Gault added with a snort.

Steven gave him an enquiring look and Gault said, ‘Call it the cynicism of my years. Forty years of dishing out pills and writing prescriptions can take the shine off youthful zeal.’

Steven nodded. At least the man was honest. ‘I understand there was some disagreement over the treatment of a child patient in the practice — a girl with a skin complaint?’

‘Not really a disagreement,’ said Gault dismissively. ‘The child’s mother wanted us to pull out all the stops for a condition that I regarded as trivial and harmless. We do not have unlimited resources in the NHS — something I failed singularly to get across to her. In the end she asked for a change of doctor and Scott took her and her daughter on to his list.’

‘I understand this child is now seriously ill?’ said Steven.

Gault nodded. ‘Although not as a result of the original complaint,’ he stressed. ‘An accident with boiling water, I understand.’

‘Her mother doesn’t seem to think it was an accident.’

Gault gave him a look that said, she wouldn’t. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ he said.

‘If the child were to confirm that she did do it deliberately and it was connected with the way she felt about her skin problem, would it alter your view of Dr Haldane’s death at all?’

‘What are you getting at?’ asked Gault suspiciously.

‘Dr Haldane’s wife is convinced that her husband was murdered and his death was linked in some way to this child’s problems. I suppose I on the other hand was considering that he may have taken his own life over feelings of guilt for what had happened to the girl and for not having referred her for psychiatric assessment. Would you consider that a possibility?’

‘No way,’ said Gault. ‘Neither of us saw the need for psychiatric involvement at any stage. The girl had a harmless condition but was being given a hard time over it at school. End of story as far as I’m concerned. She was scalded in an accident, something that played no part in Scott’s death.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Steven, getting up to go. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Oh, by the way… who or what are green sticker patients?’

‘No great mystery,’ said Gault. ‘A number of children from schools all over the country were exposed to tuberculosis at a school camp they were attending in the Lake District — TB is a growing hazard these days with children coming to live in this country from all over the place. Appropriate steps were taken and the children are being monitored as a precaution. They have green stickers on their medical records — hence the name. Any time they appear in the surgery with a problem, a report has to be made and sent off with their records for updating, filing, cross-referencing or whatever the trillions of NHS pen-pushers do these days with the information they keep demanding.’

‘I see,’ smiled Steven. ‘I understand Trish Lyons is a green sticker patient?’

‘She is,’ agreed Gault.

‘Dr Haldane’s wife claims that this caused problems in some way for her husband.’

‘It might well have done if her records weren’t available when he was looking for them — in fact, come to think of it, that might well have happened. The girls in the office would have sent them off the first time she appeared here in the surgery with her skin complaint.’

‘So Dr Haldane being annoyed about this would be perfectly understandable in your view?’

‘Absolutely, having your patient’s medical records lying in some bureaucrat’s office when you need access to them had me spitting tacks too.’

Steven thanked Gault again and left. He walked back across the green sward of the links and into the Bruntsfield Hotel where he ordered a gin and tonic and sat down by a window in the lounge to consider what he’d learned. Sci-Med had no interest in whether Scott Haldane had committed suicide or not although his own view was that he possibly had. In his experience, suicide victims often had a deeper, darker side to them than they ever showed to the world and the act often came as a complete surprise to those around them, even to those who knew and loved them most — a bit like serial killers who were nearly always described by neighbours as being quiet and polite, keeping themselves very much to themselves.

Steven had to decide if there was a possibility that Scott Haldane had been murdered and perhaps more importantly from Sci-Med’s point of view, for the reason that his wife was suggesting — that it had had something to do with one of his patients. He would have to talk to Haldane’s wife to get a feel for what value could be put on her allegations. Was she just a grieving widow who couldn’t live with the knowledge that her husband had taken his own life or did she have some good reason for saying the things she was saying?

Using the information contained in the Sci-Med file, Steven rang Linda Haldane as soon as he got back to Fraoch House. The conversation was brief.

‘Look, I’m in the middle of bathing the children. Can you call back later?’

Steven called back in an hour and explained who he was. ‘I was wondering if we could meet. I’d like to speak to you about your husband and what happened to him.’

‘Is there any point?’ asked Linda. ‘Everyone’s made up their minds. He took his own life.’

‘I haven’t.’

After a sigh and a pause Linda Haldane said, ‘All right, come round tomorrow morning when the children will be at school and in the nursery… about ten thirty.’

Steven took a note of the address and went out to eat. He chose an Italian restaurant: he felt like having noise and bustle around him. This city held a lot of ghosts for him.

Steven left Fraoch House immediately after breakfast and chose once again to walk across the city on a bright, sunny morning which showed Princes Street and the castle, high on its rock, to best advantage. Linda Haldane lived in what she described as a ‘lodge house’ in the Grange district of the city — a bit further south than Bruntsfield and one of the most desirable areas of the city with its avenues of mansion houses nestling behind high stone walls and towering trees. He found the Haldane home without difficulty and announced himself at the entry-phone at the side of the iron gates, which responded to electronic command and gave a slight shudder as an electric relay released the lock.

Linda Haldane appeared at the side door to the cottage, just inside the gates, and moved a child’s tricycle to one side before inviting Steven inside. ‘We can talk in the kitchen,’ she said.

Steven took a seat at the pine kitchen table and noted the children’s breakfast dishes on the draining board. Thomas the Tank Engine was the recurring theme. ‘Two boys?’ he asked.

Linda followed his gaze to the plastic dishes and smiled. ‘Well done… but you are some kind of detective. I’m sorry, who are the Sci-Med Inspectorate exactly?’

Steven offered a little more detail.

Linda nodded and said, ‘Makes sense. So Scott’s death falls within your remit?’

Steven gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Possibly.’

‘How can I help?’

‘We located a newspaper report in which you said that you believed your husband was murdered.’

‘I do,’ said Linda with more than a trace of defiance. ‘There’s no way that Scott committed suicide.’

‘You also told the police that you thought his death was in some way connected with a patient he was treating, a child named Trish Lyons.’

‘And you’ve come here to tell me to shut up and stop rocking the boat?’

‘No, I’ve come here to establish the truth.’

Linda looked at Steven as if she wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. ‘And how will you do that?’ she asked.

‘What I’m doing right now, talking to people, asking questions.’

‘Ask away.’

‘I need to know why you think your husband was murdered and why you think it had something to do with a thirteen-year-old girl patient.’

‘If you’d known Scott, you wouldn’t even consider for a moment that he took his own life,’ said Linda with a rueful smile. ‘It’s ridiculous. He would have been the last person on earth to ever contemplate suicide. He was the most positive person I’ve ever known.’

Steven’s look suggested that this wasn’t enough.

‘We were happy,’ insisted Linda. ‘We had everything going for us. Scott had a job he loved, we have two beautiful children, we live in a lovely city. We loved each other dearly… what more do you need?’

When she saw that Steven was still unconvinced, she added, ‘Apart from anything else, Scott was a committed Christian; he spent three years doing voluntary work in Africa before becoming a GP. You really have to be an optimist to do something like that. Talk about lighting a candle being better than cursing the darkness… Suicide was against everything he stood for.’

‘Lives can change in an instant,’ said Steven, although not unkindly. ‘There’s been a suggestion that he might have made a mistake over a young patient which led to her injuring herself. You don’t think this could have led to feelings of guilt?’

Linda shook her head. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘I know all about what happened to Trish Lyons. Scott would have been the first to admit to making any kind of mistake if he had made one but he didn’t. He didn’t believe for a moment that the girl’s injuries had been self-inflicted. He was sure it had been an accident and that her mother had come up with the self-harming claim to get her own back on the medical profession who she felt had been less than understanding about her daughter’s problems. I’m sure the girl herself will confirm this when she recovers.’

‘If she recovers,’ said Steven. ‘She’s very ill.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Steven asked the obvious question. ‘So, if there was no conceivable reason for your husband to commit suicide, Mrs Haldane… what possible reason was there for anyone to murder him?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Linda through gritted teeth. ‘I only know that Scott was found with his wrists cut and he didn’t do it — someone else did.’

For a moment Steven saw despair appear in Linda Haldane’s eyes along with the grief that was already in residence. ‘Look…’ she began, ‘I know how ridiculous this must sound to you and people can be forgiven for thinking I’m just a silly woman who can’t cope with her husband’s suicide… but I am absolutely certain Scott didn’t take his own life.’

Steven could see that this was beyond question. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I need more than your certainty,’ he said. ‘I need a motive for his murder. I need to know why you told the police you thought his death was connected in some way to Trish Lyons.’ He knew it sounded cold but it was also true.

‘Although Scott was convinced that Patricia Lyons’ scalding had been an accident, he had some theory about her condition that he couldn’t pursue because of obstacles he claimed were being put in his way. He got very angry and upset about it. Scott hardly ever used bad language but I heard him on one occasion calling it “a bloody conspiracy”.’

Steven said, ‘I understand the girl was one of a group of children being monitored centrally by Public Health people so he might have had difficulty in accessing her medical records?’

‘It wasn’t just that,’ said Linda, ‘although he was annoyed about that too. He kept making phone-calls to people who either wouldn’t speak to him or wouldn’t give him the information he was looking for.’

‘What sort of information?’

‘Scott wouldn’t tell me. He said it was something he would have to be absolutely sure about before he could say anything to anyone.’

‘But if it was upsetting him so much, you must have asked him about it on more than one occasion?’

‘Of course, but he refused point blank to tell me.’

‘Not even you, his wife?’

‘Not even me,’ agreed Linda with a sad smile, taking the point Steven was making.

‘Have you no idea at all who he was trying to phone?’

‘I assumed it was the people who were holding the girl’s medical records — but that’s an assumption on my part.’

‘Actually, it’s quite hard to see why he would need the girl’s medical records,’ said Steven. ‘I mean, you’d think her medical history wouldn’t have had much bearing on the case of a scalding accident.’

Linda shrugged but said, ‘You might not think so but I heard him tell whoever it was he was talking to that he needed more information and telling them to stop being so obstructive.’

‘And you’re absolutely sure your husband never let anything slip about what he was thinking?’

‘I think I would have remembered if he had,’ said Linda. ‘Although there was one occasion when he came off the phone and sat down looking shocked. When I asked him what was wrong he said, “They actually told me to back off if I knew what was good for me.”’

‘But you don’t know who “they” were?’

‘Sorry.’