42
The entrance to Whittlesea District Hospital was an echoing cavern of Victorian marble marred by ill-disguised wiring and a large poster exhorting patients to save your local hospital. The Grecian bust still stood, eyes blank, and dust-covered. On one wall the faded colour picture of Elizabeth Lutton hung, the smile still wavering. Dryden dwelt on the white blonde hair, thinking of the bodies entwined in the morning sunlight of the dunes thirty summers earlier. Today the bitter cold had seeped into the hall and somewhere Dryden could hear the trickling of a burst pipe. The WRVS had a stall selling tea and biscuits and he asked for directions to the weekly clinic. Out through A&E, where a single elderly patient sat holding a bloody home-made bandage to his ear, he followed a broken path of sand across the tarmac to a Portakabin. By the ramp up to its doors stood a board.
WHITTLESEA CLINIC.
Clinics morning: 9.15am to 12.15pm. Clinics afternoon: 1.15pm to 3.15pm.
TODAY: Cataract Clinic: Mr Lutton. Medical photography: appointment only. Blood Donors Clinic – all day (Caxton Road Site).
Inside the Portakabin three rows of plastic seats stood empty. In the two far corners paraffin heaters had been lit, scenting the air. The sound of the door closing brought a nurse out from behind a partition.
‘Mr Lutton?’ asked Dryden. She took Dryden into a consulting room which was also empty.
‘Mr Lutton’s just at the pharmacy – he’ll be five minutes. Take a seat.’
Dryden examined the wall, covered with medical information posters. He winced at the sight of a set of photos illustrating the onset of cataracts. In the final one a blanched retina swam in an eyeball marbled with tiny blood vessels.
Dryden considered what he’d learnt about the human triangle which had been Ruth Henry, Chips Connor and Paul Gedney. Childhood friends in a small Fen town. Ruth leaves school and goes to work in her father’s business, and as his final illness deepens, she takes over the day-to-day management of the Dolphin. Chips Connor, handsome, cheerful, and in love, follows her out to the coast. Perhaps they were happy, but somewhere in the background is an unfinished affair with Paul Gedney. Then comes Chips’ accident, and his retreat into childhood and manic insecurity. For the young Ruth Henry – a beauty queen and an heiress – it must have been an almost insupportable blow – to be chained for life to a man she would have struggled not to despise.
Dryden covered his eyes and let the cool palms heal the soreness beneath.
A phone rang on Lutton’s desk and Dryden jumped. He considered the coming interview without relish. What did he know about Mr George Lutton, consultant ophthalmic surgeon? Paul Gedney’s drug-pilfering scam relied on falsified records. Elizabeth Lutton had been the pharmacist at the time Gedney had committed his crimes. The police had gone after Gedney, but she’d been allowed to take early retirement. If Gedney had been found, would his testimony have implicated others? Was it a good enough reason to see him dead? When, and how, had Elizabeth Lutton died?
Impatient, Dryden stood again, and scanned the wall posters. One showed an eye, bulging out in diagram, incisions marked at the side.
Graves Disease, read the caption: It can be treated.
You’d never forget the eyes: it’s what everyone had said. Dryden began to read the small print but the Portakabin shook suddenly as someone climbed the outside steps.
George Lutton was the wrong side of 15 stone, a bow tie accentuating the stretched white shirt over his stomach. His face was hairless and his cheeks had livid red spots, as if the exercise of crossing the hospital yard had been a significant challenge.
He crashed into his chair and adjusted his glasses.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, reading a note, and immediately began to pack away pen and documents into an attaché case. ‘I’m sorry. I know you rang but I really can’t help you now. Elizabeth and I separated in ’78. As you know, she died in ’89; she’d been ill for several years. By that time she had a new family, and so did I. So you see…’
‘It was about Paul Gedney.’
Lutton stood, taking an overcoat down from a wooden hat stand. ‘Indeed. But I don’t want to talk about Paul Gedney, Mr Dryden.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve never understood why your wife got involved.’
Lutton froze. ‘It’s almost impossible to slander the dead, Mr Dryden, but be careful. Involved in what?’
Luckily Dryden knew the law of slander better than Lutton. There were no witnesses, so he pressed on. ‘Paul Gedney stole drugs over a period of nine months during the winter of 1973–4. I understand that’s impossible to do without attracting attention – unless the records are falsified. Your wife was responsible for the records. She retired six weeks after the police inquiry became public. Did she really need the money?’
He walked away from Dryden towards the outer doors. ‘Why do you people always assume crime is about money?’
Lutton had a Jag, black and polished like a hearse. He struggled with the door.
‘It’ll be frozen,’ said Dryden. ‘De-icer?’
Lutton, angry now, walked to the rear and the boot flipped up automatically.
Dryden was thinking fast: there was something about Lutton’s indignation that was intensely personal, a loss of face perhaps, and dignity. He thought again about the unsatisfied smile of Elizabeth Lutton. ‘They had an affair, didn’t they?’ he asked.
Lutton straightened, holding a can of de-icer. Then he leant in close and Dryden caught the whiff of cigars. ‘Look. Can I suggest you fuck off. I consider your attempts to gain access to the surgery are improper. I am being harassed. If you do it again I shall make a formal complaint. I wish to get on. I have another clinic at Friday Bridge.’
‘She must have been worried when he disappeared,’ Dryden persisted. ‘Worried he’d get caught, and try to shift the blame. Did he get in touch?’
But Lutton had said enough; he reached up to close the boot but Dryden stopped him. It was packed with kit: sealed cellophane packages of medical equipment, a small carousel for dispensing drugs and an aluminium box, like a picnic cooler, with locks.
‘What’s that?’ said Dryden, touching the cold metallic surface.
Lutton sighed, and crashed the boot down. ‘Friday Bridge has a small A&E department for injuries – they’re short of blood, I run stuff out on clinic days. It’s a blood box. Now goodbye, Mr Dryden.’
43
Humph picked him up outside the hospital gates and drove in silence to the Eel’s Foot, parking up on the edge of the long dyke which ran to the horizon: a single white line of ice which seemed to separate the landscape into two equal halves of black, featureless peat. Its surface smoked in the setting sunlight, gently smudging the image of a swan which flew towards them along the arrow-straight track, one webbed foot occasionally touching the ice in its wake.
Dryden fetched beer and juice from the bar. The sun had gone, a vast lid of steel-grey cloud having slid over their heads from the north. A violent gust of wind rocked the Capri on its rusted springs.
The cabbie carefully retrieved a miniature bottle of tequila and added it to the orange juice. ‘It’s medicinal,’ he explained, belching.
‘In what sense?’ asked Dryden.
‘In the sense that it tastes like medicine,’ said Humph, adding a second.
Suddenly the ice storm struck, rain thrashing the windscreen and cutting visibility from ten miles to twenty feet in five seconds. As they watched, the water froze on the cab’s windows in opaque patterns. Dusk seemed close now, and Humph flicked on the vanity light over the passenger seat.
Humph checked his watch and fiddled with the radio knob. They listened patiently to the national news before it switched to local weather. Dryden’s mobile had been off since DI Reade’s unwelcome text. He flicked it back on and found a voice message from DI Parlour.