Authors: Andrew Puckett
May 1997
They’d driven up in her car and the heavy traffic had prevented them talking in anything other than desultory snatches. But as he’d reflected at the time, although she’d always been pleasant and helpful to him, she’d always maintained a certain distance. They’d checked in at the hotel and arranged to meet in the bar in an hour.
He’d unpacked, showered and gone down after fifty minutes so that she wouldn’t be left on her own, only to find her already ensconced with a party of others she obviously knew. She introduced him and one of them bought him a drink, but they all seemed to be senior consultants and he quickly found himself out of place.
Nothing overt was said or done, but he realised that staying with them would call for some fairly strenuous shoe-horning on his part, so he finished his drink and quietly slipped away.
He’d grown used to his own company over the years, so he went to the inaugural session on his own. At dinner he ran into some old lab colleagues from Glasgow and spent the evening with them.
He didn’t see Connie again until the last evening. He was checking something with the receptionist when she hurried into the foyer, looked round and then said, ‘Damn!’
‘Problems?’ he asked her.
‘Oh, hello, Fraser. No, not really. I was going to meet some friends here, but they’ve obviously already gone.’ She smiled. ‘My own fault, I told them to go if I wasn’t here.’
‘You could probably catch them in a taxi.’
But she wasn’t entirely sure where they’d gone, she told him, and she certainly wasn’t about to chase round Birmingham in a taxi looking for them. She wrinkled her nose rather attractively as she said this. ‘What are you doing this evening?’ she asked.
‘I was about to go over to the Trade Fair. First chance I’ve had.’
‘D’you mind if I come with you?’
‘Of course not.’
It was only about a quarter of a mile away, so they walked.
Had he enjoyed the conference? she asked.
Very much, he told her. He’d found the sessions on tissue-typing particularly interesting. ‘Did you go?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t notice you.’
‘No,’ she said, then, after a pause, ‘I’m afraid I’ve rather neglected you.’
‘That’s all right.’ He smiled at her. ‘I ran into some old friends from Glasgow.’
I’m quite capable of looking after myself thank you, ma’am…
She smiled back. ‘Good.’
I can see you are…
They pottered round the Trade Fair for half an hour without seeing much to arouse their interest. Fraser’s Glaswegian colleagues waved from across the floor.
‘Don’t let me keep you from your friends,’ she said.
‘I won’t,’ he replied.
Ten minutes later, they’d seen enough.
‘Where were you going to eat?’ she asked.
‘I hadn’t really thought about it. Back at the hotel, I suppose.’
‘Let me stand you dinner,’ she said. ‘My treat. To make up for my bad manners.’
‘You don’t have to make up for anything,’ he said. ‘But I’d be delighted anyway.’
She chose a Mexican restaurant and the hot, spicy food, the cold, heady wine and the mournful voice of the floor singer worked on their reserve and melted it.
‘You are ambitious,’ she said.
He’d just told her how he was prepared go anywhere to make the next jump up the rickety ladder.
‘I’ve no choice,’ he said.
‘How d’you mean?’ she asked, curious.
He thought for a moment, then said, ‘With my background, I have to keep going up, I can’t afford to mark time.’
He drank some wine as he tried to find the right words.
‘It’s not just ambition,’ he said. ‘It’s also that I don’t really belong anywhere now.’ He smiled at her. ‘I was as much out of place with my old colleagues as I was with yours… so I have to keep going up.’
‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘I think—’
‘What about you?’ he said, anxious to change the subject. ‘D’you have any wild beasts to slay?’
‘What an interesting turn of phrase.’
He shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, I mean it… Can I have some more wine, please?’
He topped up her glass and she took a mouthful. ‘A year ago, I wouldn’t have had the remotest idea of what you were talking about. I might as well admit it, life had been a smooth progression for me until then…’ As she spoke, she dipped her finger into the wine and ran it round the rim of her glass. ‘I don’t know how much gossip you’ve picked up round the department… I know that I’m more than good enough for the job I do, but I won’t pretend that having a surgeon for a husband has hindered my career.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Fraser.
‘Don’t doubt what, that I’m good enough for my job, or that—’
‘That you’re more than good enough for your job.’
‘But you know what they say about surgeons?’
‘They say a lot of things about surgeons, Connie. Which had you in mind?’
‘Perhaps you should have been a diplomat, Fraser, not a doctor. That without exception they’re complete and utter bastards.’
He’d been expecting something more subtle, less obviously emotional.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m not about to embarrass you. It’s common knowledge that he ran off with a nurse half his age six months ago.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’
Her eyes flicked up. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘I’d heard something. How long had you been married?’
‘Seventeen years.’
‘Children?’
‘Two. Both at boarding school, thank goodness – it meant they missed the worst of the nastiness. Anyway,’ she hurried on, ‘we were talking about slaying wild beasts… I want to rebuild my career.’
‘Most people would think that being a consultant haematologist represented a pretty sound edifice,’ Fraser said after a pause.
‘Yes, but there are those who think that I only got the job because of Charles. That’s the beast I want to slay.’
‘I thought you said he was a bastard. Rather than a beast,’ he added at her puzzled look.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, laughing. ‘No…’ After a pause, she said slowly, ‘I won’t deny there was a time when it would have been pleasant to see him turning slowly on a spit, but… that’s in the past, I’ve moved on from that. I want to put the department on the map, to see us in the forefront…’ She giggled. ‘Mixing metaphors, always a bad sign. But that’s why I was so… disappointed when JS turned down the Alkovin trial.’
‘I suppose he must have had his reasons.’
‘I suppose he must… but a ninety-five per cent remission rate – it’s revolutionary. I think Leo was right, we could have got a major paper out of it.’
Fraser nodded. ‘My instinct would have been to go for it, too. How did you find out about it?’
‘Ian and I went to a one-day meeting and Leo buttonholed us about it.’
‘What made him choose you? I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s all right – Parc-Reed are more or less on our doorstep and we’ve always had a good relationship with them, and Avon’s a big town, a good test bed.’
‘Did you ever get to the bottom of the business about the side-effects?’
‘Not really. Leo said they hadn’t come across anything out of the ordinary in the States, while JS’s mysterious friend continued to insist that he had.’
They talked around it a while longer, then Connie paid the bill and they walked back to the hotel. The insistent throb of a disco enveloped them as soon as they walked in.
‘There’ll be no sleep till this finishes,’ Fraser grumbled.
‘Oh, don’t be such a sourpuss. Come on, it probably finishes at midnight.’ She took his sleeve and he allowed himself to be dragged on to the dance floor.
His reluctance wasn’t all feigned; he’d never been a very good dancer, even when he’d prowled the clubs in search of girls in his youth. Connie, however, was – and after a while, Fraser forgot his own lack of grace in admiration of hers. He knew she was thirty-nine, eight years his senior, yet her body, inside her thin summer dress, in the stuttering strobe lights, lost twenty of them.
He genuinely had no prescience until a slow record came on and they slipped into a loose embrace, but then he knew beyond doubt.
Pheromones
, he thought with part of his mind.
Do I really want this?
he wondered, although his body had already made his mind up for him.
‘No, yours,’ she murmured when he offered to see her to her room, and he knew she wanted to keep control – she would be the one who decided when to part.
The door snicked shut behind him and the kiss was seismic… He’d forgotten how a kiss can rock you sideways; he was aware of every part of her body at the same time – her mouth, her tongue, her nipples on his chest through the thin dress, her vertebrae beneath his fingers and the glorious curve of her bum…
He kissed her neck, her shoulders, popped the buttons of her dress which she shrugged to the floor, nuzzled her breasts, greedily sucking the swollen nipples into his mouth… They were like puppets, their movements pre-ordained.
Bed, and she groaned softly as he eased his way inside her, then again as she climaxed.
They lay awhile in sweaty post-coital regret, then they did it again.
Later, she propped herself up, looked down into his face.
‘That was beautiful, Fraser.’
‘Yes.’
‘But it didn’t happen.’
‘No.’
She quickly dressed and left.
And when they’d driven back the next morning, she’d chatted more freely than on the way up, but had never once made recognisance of what had happened.
Three months later, John Somersby was thinking about beer and its beneficent effect on mankind. The best thing of all about it, he decided as he walked home, was its levelling effect. Not up or down, he thought, just levelling – he was a convivial man and had just spent a convivial couple of hours playing skittles in the Rising Sun.
He sensed the lights of the car coming behind him at the same time as he heard its engine and stepped to the side of the narrow lane to let it pass. It slowed down and dipped its lights when the driver saw him, but then, to his astonishment, it accelerated and drove straight at him. He tried to jump out of the way, but it hit him a glancing blow on the legs. He was knocked into the steep bank and rebounded into the road.
He felt no pain and was dimly aware that the car had stopped and was reversing. It somehow came as no surprise when, instead of stopping beside him, it quite deliberately ran him over.
His wife, Barbara, phoned the pub at just before midnight, knowing they occasionally let customers stay late, but was told that John had left at just after eleven. She found a torch and set off to look for him. She had been a nurse and knew as soon as she saw him that he was dead; nevertheless, she felt for his pulse, then touched his cheek gently before getting slowly to her feet. It was only when she became aware that she was running that she realised it couldn’t help him. She didn’t stop, though.
She was interviewed at home by a dark-haired and petite inspector called Lyn Harvey, while other police sealed off the area round the body and the surgeon pronounced him dead. Then the Scene of Crime team got to work, taking photographs and samples.
The pathologist arrived and examined the body. He took his time, but all he would say was: ‘I’ll tell you more when I do the PM.’
Thus, it wasn’t until the next day that the police realised they were dealing with murder.
‘He was hit here,’ the pathologist said, indicating, ‘and the blow broke his left leg, but didn’t kill him. He would have been thrown against the bank and fallen back into the road. Then, the car reversed back over him, then forward over him again, and it was this that killed him.’
His pelvis and most of his ribs had been broken and his liver and spleen were ruptured.
‘So he would have survived the first injury?’ Lyn Harvey asked.
‘Almost certainly.’
‘Any chance that the rest could have been accidental?’
The pathologist snorted. ‘That’s your department, but I’d think it was pretty unlikely, wouldn’t you?’
The only thing he could add was that he thought the car had a low ground clearance, such as found in a sports car.
The case was handed over to Superintendent Garrett of Criminal Investigations. The first thing he did was to interview Barbara Somersby again. Their house (hers now) was a pretty cottage a little way off the road and their married daughter had come to stay with her.
‘I’m very sorry to have to trouble you at this time,’ Garrett said. He was a big man in his forties with no spare flesh, a gingery moustache and widely spaced blue eyes.
‘It’s all right, I understand,’ she said.
You don’t
, Garrett thought,
yet
… Lyn Harvey was there with him.
‘I have more bad news for you, I’m afraid,’ he said.
She stiffened and her brow creased as she wondered what more there could possibly be.
‘There’s a possibility, a strong possibility, that your husband was killed deliberately, murdered.’
Her mouth opened, then contracted to a tiny O before she closed her eyes and silently began crying again. Her daughter put her arms around her shoulders, then looked up.
‘Are you sure, Superintendent?’
‘Not absolutely, no, but it is, as I said, a very strong possibility.’
‘But my father didn’t have any enemies… there was no one who would have wanted to…’ She tailed off.
‘That’s what I need to ask your mother about, anyone with a personal grudge… and of course anyone who stands to gain by his death. Anything, no matter how tenuous.’
Barbara Somersby had regained control of herself and wiped her eyes. ‘The only person who stands to gain financially is myself, Superintendent,’ she said. Her fair hair was going grey and her blue eyes were faded, but the strong bone structure of her face gave it a dignity that Garrett would have sworn was genuine.
‘That wasn’t what I had in mind, madam.’
Necessarily
… ‘Did anyone have a grudge against him where he worked?’
She thought about this and he waited. At last:
‘You said, no matter how tenuous…?’
He nodded. ‘I did.’
‘The only thing I can think of, and it is tenuous, is a dispute he had with his colleagues a few months ago.’
She told him about Ian and Connie, Parc-Reed and Alkovin. ‘But I must emphasise, Superintendent, that it was a professional disagreement between colleagues and I’m sure that Dr Saunders and Dr Flint had accepted the situation.’
‘Your husband was their superior?’
‘Yes, in effect.’
‘And his decision was final?’
‘Yes.’
Garrett discreetly nibbled his thumbnail a moment. ‘Are either of them likely to… take over from your husband?’
‘Ian Saunders might, although they could just as easily appoint someone from outside.’
‘Not Dr Flint?’
‘It’s possible, although less likely. She’s a woman, Superintendent.’
‘I didn’t think that was a barrier in medicine.’
‘Not perhaps quite as much as in your profession, no.’
He couldn’t help glancing quickly at Lyn, whose expression remained studiously neutral.
‘So,’ he said, summing up, ‘Mr Leo Farleigh of Parc-Reed made the initial approach to Drs Saunders and Flint, they tried to persuade your husband to give the drug a trial, but he’d heard rumours that it had side-effects and refused?’
‘Yes. He was always very cautious where new drugs were concerned. He could remember Thalidomide, you see.’
He asked her whether Somersby had been regular in the days he had gone to the pub.
‘He usually went on Friday, but not Monday as a rule.’
‘So why this Monday?’
‘He was asked to fill in for someone in a skittles match.’ She smiled, sadly. ‘He enjoyed simple pleasures, Superintendent.’
‘When was this, Mrs Somersby? When did he know he was going to play skittles on Monday?’
She made a mouth. ‘Sunday evening, I think – yes, I’m sure it was.’
‘Did any of his colleagues know?’
‘I don’t think – wait… He did tell me that Ian Saunders had wanted to swap on-call with him…’
*
‘Good Lord!’ was Ian’s reaction when Garrett told him Somersby might have been murdered. ‘But he didn’t have any enemies…’
They were in Garrett’s office at the police station. ‘You mean, none that you know of, sir,’ Garrett said.
Ian shrugged and smiled. ‘I suppose that’s right.’
When had he last seen him? Garrett asked. – When he left the lab on the afternoon of his death.
Had he seemed worried about anything? – No.
‘Did you get on well with him, sir?’
‘Yes, very well.’
‘I believe there was a dispute concerning a drug trial a little while ago? Alkovin, produced by Parc-Reed Pharmaceuticals.’
‘Oh, that. Hardly a dispute, Superintendent. A minor professional disagreement.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘There isn’t much to tell…’
Garrett and Lyn Harvey listened while Ian explained how Leo Farleigh had approached him and Connie, then how they’d unsuccessfully tried to sell the idea to Somersby.
‘So the initial approach was made to you, Dr Saunders?’
‘To myself and Dr Flint, yes.’
‘Why was that, d’you think? I mean, why approach you and not the person in charge?’
Saunders smiled again – he smiled rather a lot, Garrett noticed. ‘John was known for being rather… conservative when it came to drugs. Leo thought we’d have a better chance of persuading him between us.’
‘But it didn’t work out that way?’
‘No, it didn’t,’ Ian agreed.
‘Do you still regret that? The decision not to give Alkovin a trial?’
‘I do, as it happens. I think the drug has a lot of potential.’
Garrett nodded gently. ‘What were you doing last night, Dr Saunders?’
‘Last night?’
‘Yes.’
Ian looked him in the eye, said lightly, ‘Why ask me? Am I a suspect, Superintendent?’
‘For elimination purposes, sir. We’ll be asking all other parties the same questions.’
Ian nodded slowly, said, ‘I was on call.’
‘So where would you have been, sir?’
‘At home, most of the time. But I was called in, once.’
What time would that have been? Garrett asked. – About half past nine, Ian thought… ‘It was a Thrombocytopenia and the platelet count was so low that I thought I’d better come in.’
He’d arrived at the lab at about ten to ten, looked at the film, checked that the appropriate blood products were being prepared and then gone to see the patient. ‘After that, I looked in at the lab again and then went home.’
What time had he arrived home? – About half-past eleven.
‘Are there any witnesses to any of this, sir?’
‘Yes. Steve Lovell, the SO who called me in, will remember me in the lab, the sister on Malvern Ward ought to remember me coming to see the patient.’ He smiled again. ‘And my wife will remember me coming home.’
‘Did you know that Dr Somersby was playing skittles that night?’
Ian blinked at the change of direction. ‘I did, as a matter of fact,’ he said slowly. ‘I asked him that day if he’d swap nights with me and he told me that was why he couldn’t.’
‘Why did you want to swap nights, sir?’
‘We’d been asked out to dinner at short notice by some friends.’ He gave him their name.
Had he told anyone else about Dr Somersby playing skittles? – Well, his wife, of course, and their would-be hosts, but no one else that he could remember…
Garrett checked over the details again, then let him go.
Connie, when she arrived, expressed similar shock at the possibility of murder.
‘It was bad enough him being killed, but this…’ She looked up. ‘How’s Barbara – Mrs Somersby – taking it?’
Pretty much as one would expect, Garrett told her, then asked her about the dispute over Alkovin. Unlike Ian, Connie bridled almost immediately.
‘You don’t seriously think that that has any bearing on his death, do you, Superintendent?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to ascertain, doctor.’
She made an irritable gesture, then told him how Leo had approached them first because of Somersby’s old-fashioned attitude. Yes, she was sorry they weren’t doing the trial, but life goes on…
‘What were you doing last evening, Dr Flint?’
‘So I am under suspicion?’
Garrett explained again that the questions were for elimination purposes and Connie told him that she’d been at home, nursing her son who had flu.
‘He’d come to stay with me for a few days. He began feeling unwell on Monday – which I’d taken off to spend with him – and was really quite ill on Monday night.’
‘So you didn’t go out on Monday evening?’
Connie looked distinctly embarrassed. ‘As a matter of fact, I did, Superintendent. I discovered we’d used the last of the paracetamol in the house – I don’t use it much myself. Sebi was running a high temperature, so I drove to a garage shop to buy some.’
‘What time would this have been?’
‘Around ten, I think. I’m not sure exactly.’
‘Couldn’t you have asked a neighbour?’
‘I could have, but I didn’t want to.’
‘How long were you out?’
‘Twenty minutes, maybe longer.’ She gave him the name of the garage and a description of her car.
No, she hadn’t known that Dr Somersby was playing skittles that night, and yes, her son was at home now.
‘I’d like to see him,’ Garrett said.
Connie hesitated. ‘He’s a lot better than he was, but he’s still not well enough to come here.’
‘That’s all right,’ Garrett said equably. ‘We’ll go and see him.’
She compressed her lips. ‘Very well, but please remember he’s not well.’
Sebi Flint was up, but didn’t look or sound well.
‘I’ll show a bit more sympathy with people who’ve had flu in future,’ he said with sincerity. ‘I’ve never felt so ill in my life as last night.’ He was in his late teens, fair-haired, and would probably have been fresh-faced normally.
Garrett smiled. ‘Ah, but I suspect a lot of those who say they’ve had flu have really only had heavy colds.’
Sebi told him how he’d come down from Manchester University to spend a few days with his father before he went on holiday, and then come to stay with his mother.