Gallery Whispers

'I wish it was that easy.'

'Aye, but it is in a way. I know next to nothing about these things, but I do know that determination has a big part to play.'

She kissed his chest. 'Okay, I'll do that. I'll give it The Silencer; and you can take it somewhere quiet and give it a kicking. We'll teach the bloody thing to try to come between us.'

15

'He gets around, then, this Mr Futcher,' said the Head of CID, as he and Brian Mackie turned the corner into Crewe Road South. The Western General Hospital lies only a quarter of a mile from the police headquarters building in Fettes Avenue, and so the two detectives had decided to walk to their appointment with Professor Nolan Weston.

The rain of the previous day had gone, but the afternoon was drab and cold. Martin seemed to wear its greyness like an overcoat, to match his mood. He and Alex had spent a silent night: the crisis between them remained unresolved.

'So it seems,' Mackie answered. 'Maggie and Steele saw Katie Meams, the secretary bird, first thing this morning. She backed up his story, right enough. She told them that Futcher and she worked late the night before Mrs Weston died. When they were finished he took her for a steak, then ran her home. She invited him in for coffee and afters, as she sometimes does, she says, and he stayed until two in the morning.'

'Did Maggie believe her?'

'Yes, on balance she did. So did Stevie. They gave her a moderately hard time; made her go over the story time and again. She never varied at all. Eventually she got annoyed and went into some very graphic detail about the size ofFutcher's tackle. Impressive, apparently.

His line to the other ladies is that the wife can't take too much of it.'

The superintendent paused. 'I was thinking of asking Maggie to go along and take a look at the evidence,' he added, with a sidelong smile. 'Unless you wanted to lend me Karen Neville, that is.'

Martin chuckled, in spite of himself. 'Neville would love the job, I'm sure. But she's doing something else just now,' he said, as the two men turned into the hospital's entrance roadway.

The Department of Clinical Oncology is a complex which includes some of the newest buildings within the Western General's sprawling grounds. Mackie led the way through the automatic glass doors and into the yellow brick reception area. 'Professor Weston, please,' he said to the nursing assistant seated behind its high wooden counter.

'You're the gentlemen from the police?' she asked, quietly. Martin nodded. 'Yes, he's expecting you. If you go round the corner through the double doors and up the first flight of stairs, then through another set of doors, you'll find his office third on the right. I'll buzz him and let him know that you're coming,'

They followed her directions to the letter. As they pushed their way through the second set of doors, they found a tall man standing in the hall. He was shirt-sleeved in the warmth of the hospital, wearing the trousers of a brown suit. He was as bald as Brian Mackie, but his head seemed bigger and more pointed than the superintendent's gentle dome. 'Gentlemen,' he greeted them solemnly, 'I'm Nolan Weston.'

'Hello, Professor,' said Martin accepting the proffered handshake as he introduced himself and his colleague. 'Glad you could see us so quickly. We'll try not to take up too much of your time.'

Weston led them into a tiny room, so small that there was barely room for two chairs on the other side of his desk. 'This is about Gay, of course,' he began.

'Of course,' said the Head ofCID. 'When did you last see your exwife, Professor?'

'Three weeks ago,' the tall man answered, as he folded himself awkwardly into his swivel chair. 'She and I took Raymond, our son, up to Aberdeen, for his first term at University.'

'That's just not true, Mr Weston,' Brian Mackie exclaimed. 'You've seen her since then.' He lifted his briefcase on to his lap, opened it and took out a folder. 'Two weeks ago you removed a growth from her leg at St Martha's Private Clinic in the Grange; a procedure for which those premises are not authorised, incidentally. These are your notes, and the biopsy report, which confirmed that your former wife was suffering from a malignant melanoma.'

'Where the hell did you get those?' Weston demanded angrily.

'Those are confidential.'

'Not in the context of an inquiry into a suspicious death, they ain't,'

Martin retorted.

'Suspicious death?'

'Extremely,' Mackie went on. 'I have here also, a copy of our postmortem report, which comments on the procedure you performed, and says that secondary tumours were developing rapidly. If you read it, you'll see that your ex-wife's death was caused by a massive overdose of diamorphine. Does that surprise you?'

Nolan Weston looked at him impassively. 'It saddens me. Superintendent, but no, to be frank it does not surprise me.'

Andy Martin held up a hand. 'Perhaps at this stage, sir, you would like to consider legal representation. It might be better if this interview continued on a more formal basis.'

'No, no, no,' exclaimed the surgeon. 'Let's carry on. I want to hear where this is going.'

'Let's go back to my first question, then,' said Mackie. 'When did you last see Mrs Weston alive?'

'The last time I saw her at all, officer, was when I discharged her from St Martha's. I had a very difficult conversation with her about the biopsy report, and I offered to refer her case at once to Mr Simmers, a consultant colleague of mine. She refused to let me do that. She said that she wanted to go home for a couple of weeks to think things through and put her affairs in order.

'I agreed to that on condition that if she experienced any growing discomfort she would contact me.'

'Have you spoken to her since?'

'I phoned her a couple of times of an evening, just to see that she was all right. I spoke to her last on Monday. She said that everything was as it had been, and she said that I would hear from her on Thursday.' His head dropped briefly. 'I understand what she meant now.'

'Where were you on Wednesday night, sir? Specifically, between midnight and two am?'

'I was at home, in bed, with my wife.'

'And she will confirm that?'

'If necessary. She is extremely pregnant. She kept me awake most of the night. But why do you ask me this?'

Martin shifted in his uncomfortable chair. 'Because someone helped Mrs Weston end her life. Professor. She was injected, and a plastic bag was secured over her head.'

'She couldn't have done it herself?'

'No way. Whoever did it took away the syringe and the roll of the black tape which was used to secure the bag. She had help; no doubt about it.'

'This man she saw from time to time? Futcher, the ad-man. Was it him?'

'No. We don't think so.' There was a pause, as Weston looked from one detective to the other.

'Why were you so secretive about treating your former wife, Professor?' asked Mackie.

'Because I didn't want my present wife to find out about it,' came the retort, sharply.

'Couldn't you have referred her to someone else from the very start?'

'Gay didn't want that. She asked me to do the procedure; and I always did what she asked.'

'Including divorcing her?'

Averting his eyes once more, Weston nodded.

'Tell us about your relationship with her, please,' said the Head of CID.

The man across the desk laughed, softly. 'How long do you have?'

He leaned back in his seat, until his shoulders and the back of his head were touching the partition wall behind him. 'Gaynor and I were married for twelve years,' he began, 'and throughout that time we were extremely happy… or so I thought. Then, on our twelfth anniversary, she told me she was leaving me; just like that.