And None Shall Sleep (11 page)

Sheila Selkirk blinked rapidly. ‘I see what you mean.' She was visibly shaken. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘How horrible.'

‘Isn't it?'

‘So when he was upset that morning ... ?'

‘It would seem that your husband had an inkling of what was in store. Please think, Mrs Selkirk. Did he say who he thought had sent it?'

She looked away. ‘No,' she said.

‘You're sure?' Mike was staring at her.

She nodded. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘He didn't know who had sent it.'

‘He didn't even have an idea?'

‘I said not.' She was beginning to look annoyed.

‘And you said that he had never received anything like that before?'

‘That's what I said.' And she fixed her eyes on Joanna's face as though pleading to be believed.

Mike looked at her in the car. ‘What a household,' he said. ‘That poor beggar.'

‘Selkirk was no beggar,' Joanna said. And he was not poor. But I agree. It would be nice to think someone would mourn you.'

He grinned at her. ‘How's the arm?'

She picked it up experimentally. ‘A bit sore,' she said. ‘But nothing too bad.'

‘That plaster looks like a deadly weapon, Jo.'

She nodded. ‘So mind your Ps and Qs, Sergeant!

‘So where now?'

‘I think back to the hospital,' she said. ‘I want to talk to the other nurses on duty on Monday night. If he made a phone call I want to know who to.' She gave a swift glance at the radio telephone. ‘I suppose we'd better call in first.'

But Colclough had other ideas.

‘I want you in here within half an hour, Piercy.' His determination was unmistakable.

She rolled her eyes at Mike. ‘Typical,' she raged. ‘I'm just opening enquiries. I don't want to lose this case, Mike.'

‘You want a bit of advice, Inspector?'

She nodded.

‘You've got no bloody option,' he said grimly.

Colclough's face was grim. ‘I don't expect you to like this,' he warned, ‘but the Regional Crime Squad will be taking over the case from tomorrow morning.'

She found it hard to keep her temper. He read the disappointment as well as the anger in her face. ‘I'm sorry, Piercy,' he said, ‘but this isn't a job for us local bobbies. It might be part of something quite big. A racket. The person who shot Selkirk might even be an international killer. We can't take the risk.'

‘Of messing it up?'

‘Don't be awkward, Piercy. This is a policy decision made above your head.'

She sat down heavily. Her arm ached. ‘But, sir,' she pleaded. ‘This is a local case. He was a local man. Already I'm beginning to make inroads. My investigations are unearthing things, possible motives. The family, sir ...'

‘Good God, Piercy,' Colclough exclaimed. ‘I thought you understood. This isn't some poxy little family squabble. I've read the pathologist's report – twice. This was almost certainly an organized professional contract killing.'

‘Sir ... That may be. But it was still someone local, with a personal motive, who forked out the cash. There's more to this than just a bullet in the brain. Someone wanted him dead and very badly. The reasons, sir, are not international. They are local.'

‘We have to get the Regional Crime Squad. They'll be here in the morning. Joanna, hasn't it occurred to you? We want someone from outside the area – a stranger. We don't want there to be a possibility of retaliation.'

Mike watched her walk back into the office.

‘Bad news?'

‘The worst.' She made a face. ‘We've lost the case. He's handing over to the Regional Crime Squad.' She spat the words out.

He said nothing.

‘Honestly, Mike. All this crap about internal security. Given time, we'd easily have cracked it.'

‘Would we?'

She sat down in the chair opposite him. ‘Well, we might have had trouble actually finding the gunman,' she conceded, ‘but we'd have made good inroads.' Her frustration surfaced again. ‘Damn! Now I've got to hand over all our notes, all the interviews. The bloody lot.' She scowled. ‘All that hard work. It simply isn't fair.'

Mike sat back in his chair. ‘So what now?'

She looked at his glum face and knew he felt it every bit as badly as she did.

‘We could just visit the hospital,' she suggested. ‘Talk to the other night nurses again. Just in case there's something we've missed.'

‘And then what?'

‘Then I'm going to drown my sorrows with Matthew,' she said. ‘He says he's bought me a present, and I could do with something to cheer me up. Now, let's get back to the hospital.'

They were in luck. Two of the three nurses were on duty in the coronary ward. Only Yolande Prince was missing.

The nursing officer looked at them. ‘Not surprisingly the poor girl has phoned in sick. Such a shock,' she said disapprovingly. ‘I told her mother she mustn't rush back. She needs time.'

Then she stared at Joanna. ‘Don't go giving the poor child hassle, unless you absolutely have to. She's very vulnerable ... very upset. She had a bad experience last year – upset her terribly. I had great trouble persuading her to continue working here at all. And now this.' She shook her head. ‘The poor girl seems dogged by ill luck. Such a shame ... such a shame. An excellent nurse.'

‘We'll leave her alone for a few days,' Joanna said. ‘I really wanted to talk to the other two nurses today'

‘That's all right, then. They aren't quite so sensitive as Yolande. Of course, she was in charge of the ward. So ultimately the blame does, I'm afraid, rest on her shoulders.'

For all her sympathy Joanna thought, she was as detached as a judge passing sentence. The nursing officer stood up. ‘Use my office. I'll send for Nurse Richards and Mr O'Sullivan.' She managed to inject a large amount of disapproval into the latter name and Joanna gave Mike a swift, curious glance.

Gaynor Richards was short and tubby, almost as wide as she was tall. The buttons of her nurse's uniform gaped and strained over her plump body as she rushed in, breathless and anxious to please.

After the introductions Joanna opened the questioning. ‘Do you remember Mr Selkirk being admitted?'

She nodded. ‘The day staff actually admitted him,' she said. ‘He came in in the middle of the morning. By the time we came on duty he'd calmed down a bit.' She looked from one to the other. ‘He wasn't very well. Muttered a lot. Seemed very worried.' The nurse kept smiling at both of them for no apparent reason. It was beginning to irritate Joanna.

‘Did you talk to him?'

‘Yes, I just told him everything would be all right,' she said happily. A couple of nights in here, I told him, and you'll be right as rain. Though,' she added, ‘he was very unwell.'

‘Well,' Joanna smiled encouragingly, ‘I expect that cheered him up.'

‘I think it did,' she said, leaning forward. A button popped open and she grabbed the two edges of the dress and tugged them together desperately. ‘They like to be cheered up.'

‘Did he have any visitors?'

‘Oh no!' She looked horrified. ‘He was far too ill to be having people traipsing through wanting to see him. He had to be kept quiet.' She blinked at them. ‘Wives only. His wife was there for some of the evening.' She hesitated, looked at Joanna then Mike and shut her mouth.

‘They seemed good friends?' Joanna asked casually. Gaynor Richards blinked. ‘Being ill's such a strain,' she said. ‘On the relatives as well as the patient. It's very difficult.' She looked uneasy and they guessed that Sheila Selkirk and her husband had been arguing.

‘You spoke to Mrs Selkirk?'

‘I made her a cup of tea.' She looked pleased with herself.

‘Did she say anything to you?'

‘She wanted to know about his condition.'

‘What did you tell her?'

Gaynor Richards blinked and forgot to smile. ‘We don't give away confidential details about our patients.' she said blandly. ‘The doctors speak to relatives.'

‘She spoke to the doctor?'

The nurse shook her head. ‘He wasn't around. I told her she could talk to him the next day, But she said it didn't matter.' She screwed up her face. ‘I don't think she understood how ill he was.'

Joanna sighed. ‘Perhaps you reassured her a bit too well.' Gaynor Richards looked happy and unconcerned.

‘You spoke to Mr Selkirk?'

‘I took him a drink at nine,' the nurse said, ‘just after his wife left. Then he asked if he could use the phone.'

‘And?'

‘I got it for him,' she said. ‘But he didn't have change. The hospital telephone is one of those pay phones that you can't reverse charges on. No money and he wouldn't be able to make any calls.' She thought for a moment. ‘His wife had taken his clothes, you see. She probably forgot to leave him any money.' Again she looked uncomfortable and they could picture Selkirk ranting about being left penniless.

‘So did he make a call or not?'

‘I don't know,' Gaynor said, unconscious of the two police officers' frustration. ‘I got called to the far end of the ward. But I didn't take the phone from him. I just left it there.' She thought for a moment, then said brightly, ‘He might have made a call, mightn't he?'

‘So you don't know whether he made a call at all, let alone who to?' Mike grunted.

The nurse shook her head. ‘Not really. Sorry'

‘Did he say anything else to you?'

Again she thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No,' she said, ‘I don't think so.' She leaned forward to share her confidence. ‘I think he just wanted to be quiet – to be left alone.'

‘And the last time you saw him?'

‘About half past ten,' Gaynor said. ‘You see, I thought that if he was going to be making a phone call' – she gave another one of her irritating, ingratiating smiles and tweaked her buttons together – ‘I thought – with him being a solicitor and all that – I thought he'd want a bit of privacy. So I shut the door.' She gave each of them a triumphant smile. ‘I didn't see him after that. And that was hours before he went.'

Joanna gave Mike a swift glance before looking back at the self-satisfied face of the nurse. ‘What time did he go?' she asked casually.

Gaynor almost jumped out of her chair. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I really don't. I just heard ...'

‘What did you hear?' Mike's voice was velvet-soft.

She stared at him. ‘They said about one.'

‘Who said?'

‘Staff Nurse.'

‘Yolande Prince?'

Gaynor nodded. And she pressed her lips together while her eyes were wide and staring.

They let her go out of pity.

As the door closed behind her Mike groaned. ‘Well, she was a fat lot of use,' he said.

Joanna was staring at the closed door. ‘Is she really as dull as she seems?' she asked thoughtfully. ‘All this cheering people up ... didn't know whether he'd used the phone or not... told him he'd be all right when the man knew he'd had a heart attack ...' She looked at Mike. And challenging her how she knew the time Selkirk was abducted. That sent her into a panic, didn't it?' She stopped. ‘The question is does she ring true? Is she stupid or is she clever?'

‘Stupid,' Mike said firmly. ‘Believe me. That girl hasn't any sense in her head.'

‘We'll see.' Joanna uncrossed her legs. ‘Mike,' she said softly, her face puckered in a deep frown. ‘There's something we haven't really considered.'

He waited, catching the scent of newly washed hair. That must be for Levin, he thought.

‘How did our killer know where to find Selkirk?' she said. ‘He was only admitted that day. But we have no stories of someone looking into all the rooms. No one.' She stopped for the full implication of her words to sink in. ‘Our killer knew not only that Selkirk was in hospital but how to get in and which room he was in.'

Mike nodded slowly. ‘So our killer was in contact with his employer that day.'

‘Yes.'

She sat back. ‘Who knew Selkirk was in hospital?'

‘His wife and almost certainly his partner in crime, Wilde. He would have to know.' He paused. ‘But Sheila wasn't going to tell him,' he said. ‘Bit of trouble there if I'm not mistaken.'

‘Maybe that's why he was so desperate to use the phone.'

‘In the day, maybe,' Mike said thoughtfully. ‘But our friend Gaynor was talking about the evening, just after his wife had gone home.' He met her eyes. ‘Checking up on her?'

‘Possibly,' she said. ‘And maybe her taking away his clothes and money was a clever idea so he wouldn't be able to use the phone.'

‘We've forgotten someone else who knew Selkirk was in hospital,' he said. ‘Grandpa Tony.'

Joanna nodded.

‘Now let's meet nurse number three.'

Ian O'Sullivan proved to be a thin-faced man in his mid twenties, pale skinned with mischievous blue eyes.

‘Hello there,' he said when Joanna introduced herself and Mike. ‘I wondered when you'd be getting around to me.'

Joanna raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, we're here now and want to know anything you can tell us about Mr Selkirk.'

‘I was the one who helped him settle in,' O'Sullivan said proudly. ‘So I was probably the one who spoke the most to him. That wife of his,' he continued, ‘wasn't she just the frosty one.'

‘Was she?' Mike asked innocently.

‘Glad she was that he was suffering I could see it in her eyes. Takin' pleasure in it,' he added maliciously.

‘But she left around,' Joanna glanced down at her notes, ‘nine?'

‘He watched her go.' O'Sullivan was enjoying telling his tale. ‘Watched her close the door behind her. And then he asked Fatty Richards if he could use the phone.' O'Sullivan stopped and swallowed. ‘Bloody desperate he was to get at that phone.'