The burden of doubt, p.10
The Burden of Doubt, page 10
‘Nurse Hay,’ he said, having taken note of her identification badge, ‘would you describe Dr Farrell as generally well liked in the department?’
Nurse Hay opened her mouth to make an instant response and then closed it again. ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding guarded. ‘Oh, yes,’ she added with emphasis. She glanced nervously down the corridor, her eyes following the route Cavanagh and the irate visitor had taken.
‘Do you think Mr Cavanagh will be free soon?’ Laura asked in friendly tones. ‘To speak to us again?’
‘I don’t know.’ Nurse Hay’s face had lost its flush now, but the guarded air still persisted. She looked down once more at the notes she had been making.
‘Thank you, Nurse Hay,’ Swift murmured, glancing at Laura and giving a jerk of his head towards the exit door of the department.
‘So, where are we at now, sir?’ Laura asked her boss, her mind running back through the last two interviews.
‘Travelling down a number of seemingly blind alleys,’ he commented.
She didn’t disagree. ‘And squeezing all the sponges dry with remarkable speed.’
‘Maybe Cavanagh isn’t as safe and dry as he thinks,’ Swift said. ‘According to his diary his appointment was with someone called Tricklebank.’
‘Do you think Tricklebank was Mr Exceedingly Angry? The shouter in the corridor?’
‘Quite likely. So as we haven’t many more blind alleys to head down urgently, why don’t we wait around and see if we can catch Mr Tricklebank and have a word when he emerges from his clash with Cavanagh?’
Laura saw the point. ‘And if he manages to slip out without our seeing, he shouldn’t be too difficult to find. There can’t be many Tricklebanks in this part of the world, can there? Or, indeed, many parts at all.’
Doug had worked his way through Shaun’s workmates, trying to get a handle on the man’s daily routines. Nothing of immediate significance had turned up. Shaun had emerged sounding like a guy who kept his private life to himself. His workmates knew that Shaun lived with a girlfriend, but none of them referred to her by name, or seemed to know anything about her or the relationship. The only thing of any possible importance was that one of his mates mentioned that Shaun’s grandmother had died recently and that Shaun had seemed pretty cut up about it. Doug had followed this up with a gleam of hope, but neither the informant nor any of the other colleagues knew the grandmother’s name or where she had lived.
The manager at Busfield’s works knew even less, except that Busfield was a reliable worker who turned up on time and turned in the work. He’d been employed at the firm for two years. And as regards what he did in his spare time, well, the manager considered that was none of the firm’s business. And no, he couldn’t put his hand on the references Busfield had come with when he got the job.
Doug doubted there’d ever been any question of formal references. Probably no more than word of mouth of the last employer who more than likely wanted to get shot of Busfield. And predictably this present manager had stated that he couldn’t imagine Busfield being the sort of bloke who would run amok and kill a woman in her own house in cold blood. Whereas we old cynics in the police know that there’s no such thing as the sort of bloke who wouldn’t commit murder, he told himself. Everyone’s the sort of bloke when you get down to the nitty-gritty.
‘Do you have a signing out policy for using the vans?’ Doug asked, having noticed two cream vehicles painted with the firm’s logo standing out in the yard behind the warehouse.
The manager eyed the constable with a world-weary stare. ‘In theory, yes.’
‘Do you keep a book?’
‘Yeah. Don’t run away with the idea we’re slack outfit here. Drivers have to sign in to get issued a key.’
‘But there can be occasional slip-ups,’ Doug commented, his tone non-committal.
The manager shrugged. He guessed the constable understood the situation only too well.
‘I’d like to see the book,’ Doug said.
The manager rummaged amongst the piles of papers on his desk. ‘Here – help yourself!’
Doug leafed through the pages for January, but found no entry in Shaun Busfield’s name. However going back a few months provided evidence of three weekends during the autumn when Busfield had signed for one of the vans. Pointing this out to the manager he intimated that the police would need to take the vehicle in for examination.
The manager threw his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Is this really necessary?’
‘Yes.’ Doug disliked outright lies, but found this one not too difficult when he considered the issue of covering his back as far as reprisals from Superintendent Finch were concerned.
Leaving the manager sighing in weary disbelief at the demands of the law, he went on to Tina’s place of work and dragged her from the task in hand which was painting a bored looking client’s fingernails with bubble-gum pink varnish.
Tina was not at all pleased, and decidedly on edge. Which was exactly what Doug had aimed to achieve.
‘I don’t like you coming to my work,’ she said, tight-lipped, as she spoke to him on the little platform forming the stepping down place from the fire escape at the back of the building. In the cruel rawness of the grey, darkening afternoon she was soon shivering in her thin pink gingham work overalls and she wrapped her arms tightly around her chest in a gesture of protection and protest.
Calm but insistent, Doug kept up a steady bombardment of questions as to Shaun’s whereabouts. But despite her agitation, Tina was firm and steadfast in asserting that she had not seen or heard from Shaun since his disappearance at the time the police came looking for him.
‘He’s not stupid,’ she told them. ‘He’ll keep his head down.’
‘And why would that be?’ Doug asked.
‘Because he’ll know he’ll be in bother if you find him.’ She rolled her eyes in exasperation at the banality of the questions.
‘When we find him, love,’ Doug corrected gently.
‘Huh!’
‘And why should he think he’ll be in bother?’ he continued.
‘Who wouldn’t think that if they knew the police were after them for murder?’
‘But he didn’t know that when we came for him, Miss Frazer,’ Doug pointed out.
‘But he certainly will now! Don’t you CID guys ever watch TV?’ She put on a prim expression and enunciated her next words with care. ‘Police are still hunting Shaun Busfield, whom they want to speak to in regard to the murder of Mrs Moira Farrell, a local doctor.’
Doug considered this mimicking of one of the Look North newsreaders to be pretty commendable. ‘Well, you’ve got the spiel off pat,’ he remarked ironically. ‘I’d say you’ve been keeping a close eye on what’s going on in this murder investigation.’
Tina gave a dry laugh. ‘Yeah. And it seems to me there hasn’t been a lot. Going on, I mean.’ She was smirking like a cheeky adolescent.
During the questioning it had occurred to Doug that Shaun Busfield’s girl was quite a hot little piece. ‘Aren’t you worried about him?’ he asked, his mind moving not so much around the issue of loneliness but on the distressing lack of regular and readily available sex when a partner was absent.
Tina gave a foxy smile. ‘He can take care of himself.’
‘So you’re not telling us anything,’ Doug commented.
‘I’ve nothing to tell,’ she said. ‘And if you don’t let me get back to work I’ll have no job and nothing to live on either.’
Doug nodded assent. They went back into the warmth of the building. Tina turned down the corridor leading to the room where her client was waiting.
‘I’ll be back,’ Doug called after her. He climbed into the car and fired the engine. That one could be a whole lot tougher than she looks, he decided as he waited to turn into the traffic. Although she’s hardly Myra Hindley in thrall to Ian Brady. He turned on Radio 2 and tapped out a rhythm on the wheel.
But he’d be surprised if she didn’t know something his team would find interesting. And even more surprised if she let on where he was hiding out.
Reinstalled in Beauty Therapy Room 3 with her now gratifyingly curious client, Tina reloaded her brush with a fresh coating of Sizzling Pink and painted a large framing U around the client’s thumb nail. All in all she felt the interview with the police had gone well. Let Shaun sweat. Let the police sweat. It felt good having a share of the power for a change.
Swift stepped forward as the man he assumed to be Tricklebank walked through the automatically opening exit doors of the hospital. ‘Mr Tricklebank?’
The man turned, a stocky figure in his thirties with light brown hair. His eyes were hollow with weariness as though he hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep for some time. He was wearing a crumpled grey suit, a badly ironed white shirt and a blue tie. His clothes suggested that he was bound for some kind of middle manager job, but the dark stubble of his unshaved chin didn’t quite fit that assumption. He brushed a hand over his forehead and Swift could tell by the tremor that he was drinking too much on a regular basis.
‘Who wants to know?’ His voice was filled with the same exhaustion as his face, and it was hard to believe he was the man who had made such violent protests in the hospital corridor.
Swift showed his ID. ‘We wondered if we could have a word with you, sir. It’s in connection with the murder of Dr Moira Farrell.’
Tricklebank stared at him in bewilderment. His face crumpled as though being approached in this way was just the last straw.
‘It’s just for information, sir,’ Swift said gently.
‘Don’t tell me I’m a suspect,’ the man said with grim resignation. ‘I’ve enough on my plate without that.’
‘We’re simply making enquiries at the hospital, gaining background information from people who worked with Dr Farrell and who knew her as a colleague, or as a patient.’
Tricklebank was paying full attention, looking from Swift to Laura as though assessing their trustworthiness. ‘I didn’t know Dr Farrell, but I can give you chapter and verse on that slimy bastard Cavanagh. If anyone needed putting behind bars, it’s him.’ He spoke with soft venom.
Swift began to walk away from the busy entrance, leading the three of them to a less crowded place at the edge of the ambulance parking area. ‘Go on,’ he said.
Tricklebank looked undecided, as though the impulsive urge to unload had vanished as swiftly as it had arrived. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, turning it around in his fingers as he pondered.
‘This is a murder investigation, sir,’ Swift said, reflecting on the countless number of times he must have said those words. ‘Anything connected with Dr Farrell’s life and her work could be relevant to our enquiry.’
Tricklebank lit a match and cupped his hand around the tip of his cigarette, shielding it from the raw wind which was gusting around the edges of the building. ‘That man, Cavanagh, has ruined our lives,’ he said. ‘Because of him, my wife lost her baby.’ He took a long pull at his cigarette, inhaling into his lungs. ‘And I’ve more or less lost her.’
Both Swift and Laura began formulating follow up questions to that last statement, and both simultaneously decided that silence was the only possible way forward.
Tricklebank exhaled and then said, ‘She’s in a wheelchair, she can’t speak properly; she wets herself; she shits herself: she wishes she was dead.’
Prickles ran up the back of Laura’s neck at the sounds of this man’s raw grief. She glanced at Swift, recalling that he had suffered the sudden brutal loss of his own wife and guessing that he was sharing the emotion. ‘When did you lose the baby?’ she asked Tricklebank.
By now their informant had no need at all for prompting. The grief-stricken man couldn’t wait to tell his story to a sympathetic audience.
‘Thirty-two days ago. They’ve been the longest days of my life.’ Again he drew hard on his cigarette. ‘It was our first baby – we’d had no trouble getting started with one and she was fine in her pregnancy, so we didn’t expect any difficulties. I brought her in when the pains started coming regularly, and everything was going to plan until the second stage. The baby seemed to get stuck in the birth canal. The midwife started getting a bit twitchy and talking about foetal distress. That’s when Cavanagh came on the scene. The big boss, the top man.’ Tricklebank’s face twisted with scorn. ‘He tried to get the baby out with forceps but that didn’t work. So they whisked my wife off to theatre to do a Caesarean. About half an hour went by and Cavanagh came out to tell me they’d lost the baby. He was very kind and sympathetic. He told me there’d been a risk that both the baby and my wife would die. She’d started haemorrhaging badly. He’d wanted to avoid doing a hysterectomy because he knew we’d want to try for another baby. But in the end he had to do one.’ Tricklebank snuffed out his cigarette and stared moodily into some far, unseen distance.
‘He made it sound as though he’d been a bit of a hero to save my wife, and I went along with it and thanked him like the gullible, grateful fool I was at the time. It wasn’t until later I realized something really bad had happened during the operation. When she came round, it was as if she’d had a stroke; her speech was all slurred, her hands and fingers lifeless, her legs so weak she had to have a wheelchair issued.’ He looked at the cold, dead cigarette butt in his fingers and carefully placed it in his pocket.
‘I took her home and we soldiered on for a time and it was hell. I got to thinking that some awful cock-up had taken place. I went to see Cavanagh again, but he just insisted he’d done all he could. And then a friend at work told me his neighbour had had surgery from the smarmy bastard too and she was in a right mess as well. She was thinking of suing.’ He stopped and breathed in deeply, a breath of exhaustion and total frustration.
‘But you can’t get to grips with these guys. Cavanagh just smiles and keeps on saying he did all he could. And the management lot at the hospital won’t give an inch. I’ve been asking to see my wife’s medical notes over and over again. They kept saying they’d get them for me. Then they said they couldn’t seem to find them, and after that it seemed they’d gone missing – for eternity. They made a real show of being oh so sorry about it! And do you know what? I can’t do a damn thing about it.’ He eased his weight from the stone pillar he’d been leaning against, stoic resignation on his features. ‘So there’s a story to brighten your day,’ he told his two grave-faced listeners.
Swift nodded in respect of the man’s suffering. ‘Are you’re sure you didn’t meet Dr Farrell?’ he asked gently. ‘She worked as an anaesthetist in the gynaecology department.’
‘Sorry, no. The only doctor I got to see was Cavanagh. The nurse on duty was very kind and the midwife was great too. But what could they do?’
‘Do you have their names?’ Laura asked.
Tricklebank shook his head. ‘I’d know them if I saw them again,’ he said, kicking out at a small stone lying on the ground. ‘But what I want now is simply for Cavanagh to admit he made a mistake. To admit he’s ruined our lives.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Got to go. I couldn’t get anyone to watch the wife and she gets in a bit of a state if she’s left alone too long.’
Swift and Laura watched him walk away.
‘Any thoughts?’ Swift said.
‘Still digesting.’ She wrinkled her forehead as she reflected on what they had just heard, and as usual a small inverted triangle appeared between her eyebrows. ‘It might be interesting to talk to the neighbour of Tricklebank’s friend – the one who’s considering suing Cavanagh.’
‘It would certainly be interesting.’ Observing her eager expression, he smiled. ‘But maybe not relevant to the case.’
As they walked to the car-park he reflected yet again on the current pulse of frustration running through this case, their failure to flush Shaun Busfield out from whatever sanctuary he had found for himself. He conjured up an image of the information on the whiteboard in the incident room. The pictures of the slain Moira Farrell, the names of possible suspects and leads, and at the centre of the display the blown-up photo of the bloodstained sole of Busfield’s trainers standing out like a reproach. Hard evidence which was of no use whatsoever until Busfield was flushed out.
He caught Laura’s quizzical gaze. ‘You go track down the neighbour if you think it might be productive,’ he told her. ‘Why not?’
Damian Finch summoned Swift and his team into his office. As usual coffee was percolating in his machine sending out tantalizing wafts of burnt vanilla through the air. Finch was prowling up and down behind his desk clutching a mug of coffee. On this occasion he did not invite the team to join him in taking some refreshment.
‘So,’ he said, speaking in low icy tones as though musing solely to himself, ‘it seems that we are well and truly stuck in the unfortunate situation of having identified a prime suspect, and having allowed him to elude us and lead us a merry and protracted little dance.’ Finch sighed, his glance flashing over the team, flaying each one of them with the severity of his glare. Whilst he had been in post only a few weeks his subordinates were now well aware that his dark moods could infect the whole station, ensuring that it was in everyone’s interest to keep him happy. ‘And from the look on all your faces,’ he continued, ‘I am assuming that little has happened so far to encourage us to have hope of finding our suspect with due haste.’
‘As you know, sir,’ Swift said, unruffled by the superintendent’s ice-man tactics, ‘we’ve got our press officer to set up an appeal through all the relevant TV, radio and press outlets to alert the public to Busfield’s disappearance and our need to find him.’
Finch blinked and frowned as Swift spoke. ‘What about the girlfriend?’ he barked, cutting his DCI short before he could continue his account. ‘I don’t suppose she’s showing any signs of changing her mind and favouring us with some clues as to Busfield’s whereabouts? No, don’t bother answering that, you’d have told me already, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Swift said quietly. ‘We’re continuing our house to house questioning with Busfield’s neighbours, and any other contacts who might be able to help us.’
