Питер Ловси - Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

“And how would he have appeared? Unsteady, like a drunk?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“A distressed drunk?”

“Distressed is probably right.”

“Unable to speak?”

“That’s possible. The knife cut through some of the blood vessels and airways in the lung, so there was bleeding not only into the chest cavity but into the air passages. That would have affected his power of speech.”

“You see what I’m getting at?” said Diamond.

Merlin grinned. “You’re testing the woman’s story. I was at the scene before you, remember,” he rubbed it in. “I saw the brandy bottle on the table. But I’m not given to speculation, as you know.”

“Jack, I could be making an arrest very soon. Someone entered that house and stabbed him. Not the wife. I’m convinced she’s telling the truth.”

“Do you have a suspect?”

“I’m getting close.”

“I wouldn’t get too close. If you nab them for murder at this stage, you could be torn to shreds by a good defence counsel. Mrs Noble admits that she clobbered her husband with the teapot. She may have killed him, stabbing or no stabbing.”

It was a five-minute drive, no more, from the hospital to the murder house in Collinson Road. Frustrated by his session with Jack Merlin, Diamond looked to Julie Hargreaves for some progress in the investigation. He had left her there with Trish Noble, ostensibly checking the contents to see if anything had been stolen. More importantly, she would have been working on drawing Trish out, putting her at her ease and gaining her confidence in the way that she did with women suspects almost without seeming to try. If there were secrets in the lives of the Nobles, Julie was best placed to unlock them.

When he looked in, the two women were waiting in that chintzy living room with the bullfight poster and the map of Somerset. The television was on and coffee and biscuits were on the table. There must be something wrong with my methods, Diamond thought. While I look at a dead body, my sidekick puts her feet up and watches the box.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked.

Julie looked up. “We were waiting for you.”

“What are you watching — a kids’ programme?”

“Actually we were looking out of the window at the SOCOs in the back garden.” She reached for the remote control and switched off. “They look as if they’re about to pack up. Would you like coffee?”

“Had a hospital one, thanks.” In a paper cup from a machine and tasting of tomato soup, he might have added. He wouldn’t want another drink for some time. He reached for the packet of chocolate digestives and helped himself. “What’s the report, then? Anything missing?”

“Most of the furniture from my kitchen,” Trish Noble said accusingly.

“That’ll be the scenes of crime team,” Diamond told her. “They must have left you a check-list somewhere. You’ll get everything back eventually.”

“They weren’t the ones who pinched the photos from my fridge door.”

He said smoothly, “You’ll get them back.” He reached for the art book he’d remarked on before and leafed through the pages. “Is anything of value missing? Money? Jewellery?”

Julie answered for her. “We checked. Everything seems to be there.”

“Speaking of money,” Diamond said to Trish as if she had brought up the subject herself, “we’ll need to look at the bank account and your credit card statements. You do have a credit card? How are you placed financially? I’m not being nosy. We need to know.” He knew, but he wanted to question her on the details.

“We’re solvent,” she answered without looking up.

He hadn’t Julie’s talent for easing out the information. “Your husband must have been given a lump sum when he was made redundant.”

She only nodded, so he talked on.

“It seems generous at the time, but it soon goes, I dare say. Where do you keep the statements?”

“They should still be in the front room if your people haven’t taken them away.”

“Would you mind?” he asked her.

In the short interval when Trish was out of the room, Diamond asked Julie what she had learned of importance.

“Glenn was up to something that she didn’t care for,” said Julie. “I think we touched a raw nerve asking if he had been two-timing her with some other woman.”

“You touched the nerve,” he said. “That was your contribution.”

Julie flushed slightly. She wasn’t used to credit from Peter Diamond. “Anyway, she’s suspicious, but she isn’t sure.”

“She wouldn’t have stuck a knife in his back unless she was damned sure.”

Trish returned and handed across the statements. He studied them. “High standard of living. Shopping at the best boutiques. Meals out at Clos du Roy and the Priory. A holiday in the south of France.”

“That’s the way we chose to spend our money.”

“But it doesn’t seem to have hit your bank balance.”

“Glenn had his redundancy cheque.”

“What’s this restaurant in Exeter that you visited twice in August?”

“The Lemon Tree? We often eat there after visiting his brother. Alec’s home is a working paper mill, a lovely old place in the country near Torquay, but he forgets that people need to eat.”

“I can take a hint. We’ll get you back to your sister’s,” said Diamond.

Seated in the front, whilst Julie drove, he tried drawing out Trish by talking about the pressures that nurses had to work under. “My own health is pretty good, thank God, but in this line of work you get to see the insides of hospitals all too often. The RUH is one of the better ones. I still wouldn’t care to be a nurse.”

She didn’t comment. Perhaps she found it hard to imagine the big policeman nursing anyone.

“How long have you worked there, Mrs Noble?”

“Three years.”

“And before that?”

“Frenchay.”

Another local hospital, in Bristol.

“It’s a vocation, isn’t it?” Diamond rambled on. “Nursing isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. So is doctoring. Better paid, but still a vocation. I’m less sure about some of the others who work in hospitals. The administrators. It’s out of proportion. All those managers.”

She didn’t take his pause as an invitation to join in.

“They tell me the Health Service managers are the only lot who are on the increase,” he said. “Oh, and counsellors. Counselling is the biggest growth industry of all. We need it for everything these days. Child care, education, careers, marriage, divorce, unemployment, alcoholism, bereavement. I don’t know how we managed before. If there’s a major disaster — a train crash or a flood — the first thing they announce after the number of deaths is that counsellors are with the families. We even have counsellors for the police. Some-thing ugly comes our way, like a serial murder case, or child abuse, and half the murder squad are reckoned to need counselling. Watch out for the counsellors, Mrs Noble. If they haven’t found you yet, you may be sure they’re about to make a case study of you.”

She didn’t respond. She was looking out of the window.

“Me, too, probably,” said Diamond.

“Give me the dope on the Porterfields,” Diamond asked as Julie steered the car out of the police station yard and headed for Widcombe Hill. On his instruction, she’d spent the last hour checking.

“They’ve lived in Bath for the last five years. Moved out of a terraced house in Bear Flat at the end of 1993 and into this mansion by the golf course. There must be good profits in car parts.”

He grunted his assent. “You’re talking to a man who just had to buy a set of new tyres.”