Norma didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, imagined gross deformities, something bestial. The midwife said gently, ‘It’s a little girl.’ And Norma’s eyes flew to the form on the plastic sheeting. And she was perfect.
‘I am sorry,’ the midwife said, ‘you get your breath and then we’ll see about the third stage.’ And with that she folded the sheet over the baby and took her away.
‘Why?’ Norma said to Don. ‘The cord, it wasn’t around her neck.’
‘No,’ he said, his voice husky, ‘sometimes we never know.’
And they never did.
Norma was able to go home the following day, away from the ward of newborns and happy mothers.
And into the pit.
That’s how she always thought it. Buried in the dark and cold. Numb and unfeeling.
Don still had to work and study. Some days she didn’t move from her bed from the time he left the house until he returned. There were days when speech was too much effort. She took the tablets that had helped settle her nerves at university but they weren’t strong enough. Food was irrelevant, sickening. She didn’t bathe unless Don insisted, running her bath, taking her rancid clothes away.
He tried talking to her but the words slithered around her and sank, joining her in the pit.
She took lots of tablets once and Don found her, her face and hair spackled with vomit. He raged at her. He thought she’d meant to kill herself.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I just wanted to feel safe again. The tablets, they’re not strong enough. You don’t have to stay. I’m not well, I know that. And now…’ Without the baby, she meant.
‘I’m staying,’ he said, ‘you’ll get better.’ He was so determined.
He filled a prescription, come home with it and emphasized it was just for the short term, to help her through this rough patch. It helped. It took away the cold, hard grief and it filled the gaping hole where her heart had been. It helped her forget about the baby. About everything. She began to live again.
Chapter 32
It was an honest mistake Lisa kept telling herself but what if DI Mayne wouldn’t give her a second chance? She wanted to be a detective, she liked the work, thought she could be good at it, or could be if she hadn’t made such an idiotic mistake.
She looked in the mirror, straightened her back, lowered her shoulders. Time to go.
When she knocked on his door he called her in.
‘Shut the door,’ he said and her heart sank. His tone was cold, he looked pissed off. She stood to attention in front of his desk.
‘Put yourself in my shoes,’ he said, ‘a fundamental mistake, what action do you expect me to take?’
‘Demotion,’ Lisa said, ‘back to the beat, filing.’
‘That might be appropriate but I’m not going to do that. Instead I want you to revise all your arrest and caution procedure…’
He was giving her a chance. Yes! She felt the weight lifting, the dread melting away.’
‘… You study your handbook. In future, if there are diversions, interruptions of any sort, you double check that you’ve actioned and noted every single step. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’ She wanted to smile, fought to keep her face set, serious.
‘You stay on the case,’ DI Mayne said, ‘and you see it through. You deal with the fact that if Aaron Matthews is guilty, he may well escape prosecution as a result of your oversight. If that turns out to be the case you can explain it to Norma Halliwell in person.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Lisa said, praying that it wouldn’t come to that, but prepared to do whatever he said as long as she could stay on the team.
Butchers had continued to speak to patients who had seen Dr Halliwell on the day he died to see if anyone remembered anything out of the ordinary, or noticed anything sinister. Now and again he consulted with Vicky who knew a good deal about the practice even though she had only been receptionist for a couple of years.
‘The home visits,’ Butchers asked her. ‘Dr Halliwell called on Roy Gant on Tuesday.’
‘Oh, yes. His wife Peggy, she’d been ill a while. A smoker – she had emphysema and heart trouble then they found the cancer.’
‘So, it was expected – her death.’
‘Yeah. Poor bloke. Be nice,’ Vicky said.
‘I’m always nice,’ Butchers said. His phone rang – the boss calling. Vicky left him to it.
‘Boss?’ Butchers said.
‘Listen, Shap’s not got anywhere so far with those who’ve made official complaints. We are still investigating the link between Howard Urwin and Aaron Matthews in case Matthews acted on Urwin’s behalf. Adele and Howard Urwin are alibi-ing each other but I’m convinced that Adele wouldn’t countenance the killing.’
Butchers slipped off his shoes and stepped onto the scales.
‘So Aaron Matthews is still the lead horse?’ Butchers said.
‘That’s right but we continue other lines of inquiry and I’m thinking there could be patients who weren’t happy with Dr Halliwell but who won’t necessarily have filed an official complaint. They might just have jumped ship, moved to another practice, sacked him. So look at anyone who left his list in the last few years; changed their doctor. There may be something there, below the radar.’
Butchers stepped off the scales and looked at the BMI chart on the wall. His reading put him firmly in the ‘obese’ category.
‘Will do.’
‘How are you getting on with the appointments?’ the boss said.
Speak to your GP about lifestyle change and weight reduction. ‘I’ve talked to all the afternoon surgery appointments from Tuesday and there’s nothing there,’ Butchers said. ‘It’s like Dr Finlay’s casebook, not a bad word from any of them, the man’s a saint. Thought I’d do the home visits next, confirm the timing?’
‘Who were they?’
Butchers picked up his notes from the desk. ‘Marjorie Keysham, she’s in a nursing home, Halliwell prescribed diamorphine for her. He also called to certify the cause of Peggy Gant’s death, she died at home after an illness, husband’s name is Roy.’
‘Shap can try Keysham, if she’s up to having visitors – send him the details. You check with Roy Gant,’ the boss said.
Shap hated places like this. All floral curtains and the smell of piss under air-freshener. A load of old women with grey perms and twin-sets. And now the ones he was talking to, treating him like an idiot.
He repeated, ‘Dr Halliwell came on Tuesday afternoon, he left a prescription for you.’
Both of the old biddies, Marjorie Keysham and the Matron, shook their heads, acting like he was the one with missing marbles.
‘Tuesday afternoon, diamorphine for Marjorie Keysham.’ Maybe it needed repeating a few times to permeate, Shap thought.
‘I was here,’ the Matron said, ‘we had no visit from Dr Halliwell.’
‘And Tuesday, I go to my reading group,’ Marjorie Keysham said. ‘Besides, I’d remember if I’d seen the doctor, especially if he’d given me morphine. Fantastic stuff, had it when I broke my hip. I’d remember, Sergeant: I’ve got cancer not dementia.’
Both of them bounced their heads up and down like two nodding dogs.
Had Butchers got it arse over tit or had Dr Halliwell been playing hooky? Pretending he was off on home visits when he was actually on the golf course or screwing some bit on the side. Something was going on.
Shap explained the situation to Butchers who got all excited about it, something to do with the prescriptions. He told Shap to come to the surgery and said the boss would want to be in on it too.
When they had all arrived, Butchers showed them the pattern he’d found: a list of patients, all with addresses at nursing homes, all with prescriptions for diamorphine.
‘I’ve rung three of them,’ he said, ‘and it’s the same story. Halliwell has invented these visits and then he’s written the prescriptions.’
‘Always diamorphine? Always nursing homes?’ the boss said.