‘You think the fire’s related to Theo’s murder?’
He shrugged. ‘I hope I’ve got an open mind.’
‘Stella wouldn’t hurt a fly, even in her maddest moments. Crispin had a fearsome temper. I can imagine him lashing out at Stella, but he loved the baby. And even if the fire was his fault, why kill Theo after all that time?’
And what, Porteus thought, could any of this have to do with Melanie Gillespie?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Porteous had made an appointment to see Melanie’s psychiatrist. Walking from the car park to the day hospital, all glass and concrete like the superstore next door, he tried to walk in her footsteps, see it through her eyes. On the step by the entrance, a young couple stared blankly into space, smoking cheap smuggled cigarettes. In the waiting-room a middle-aged man with wild hair paced backwards and forwards talking to himself about God. Sitting on one of the orange plastic chairs in the corridor a plump woman in a neat, grey raincoat sobbed discreetly into a handkerchief. What would Melanie have made of them? Would she have considered herself different and sat apart? Would she have visited the place alone, her parents too busy to be there? He found it hard to imagine Melanie here at all. He thought Richard Gillespie would have arranged somewhere private, an exclusive clinic where discretion would be guaranteed, the sort of health farm where customers were force fed instead of starved.
The receptionist on the main desk gave him a brief smile of recognition, but when he showed her his warrant card she shook her head. A sort of apology for mistaking him for one of the patients. The waiting-room was unusually busy. The hospital tried to see patients on time. If they were kept hanging around some lost their nerve and walked out. Others turned nasty. Porteous had a sudden qualm of conscience about taking up the doctor’s time.
‘Mr Porteous, the doctor will see you now.’
They watched him, aware he was jumping the queue, but too apathetic or too cowed to comment. The nurse started walking with him.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know the way.’
He followed the corridor with its jolly posters promoting healthy eating and adverts for self-help groups, until he came to the door. He stopped outside, feeling for a moment the old anxiety, the breaker of rules outside the head teacher’s study, then he knocked lightly and went in.
Collier was a red-headed Scot with freckles and blue eyes. He ran marathons and looked horribly fit.
‘Peter. You’re looking very well.’
Despite himself he felt pleased. Collier had always been honest. If he looked lousy he’d have said so. This meant he must be doing OK.
‘I’m not here for me. Didn’t they say?’
‘Yeah. There’s a note somewhere.’ He scrabbled through a pile of scrap paper. Porteous would have loved the opportunity to go through the desk, to reduce it to a series of neat piles. ‘And I had a phone call,’ the psychiatrist continued. ‘From Mr Gillespie.’ He lay back in his chair. ‘What you might call a warning shot across my bows.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh aye. I’m to respect Melanie’s confidentiality although she’s dead. The cheek of the man. You’d think he was paying me.’
‘Isn’t that odd? I mean Melanie being treated on the NHS. He must have private health insurance.’
‘I’m the best,’ Collier said, quite seriously. ‘If he’d asked around he’d have been told that. And I don’t do private.’
‘I do know. That you’re the best.’
Collier grinned. ‘And they might have gone private before they came here. They said not, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d tried something else. Herbal remedies. Acupuncture. Hypnosis. Any damn thing to avoid having to face what was going on. You’d be surprised by the number of patients who’ve been fooled by some quack but who’re too embarrassed to admit it.’
‘So,’ Porteous said cautiously. ‘There’s nothing you’re prepared to tell me. You’ve been warned off.’
‘I can’t tell you about the lassie’s illness.’
‘When did you last see her?’
Collier opened a desk diary. The pages were covered in scribbled notes and crossing out. The lack of order made Porteous wince.
‘A week ago. It was a house call.’ He paused, frowned. ‘Oh bugger Gillespie! But just be discreet. He says he’ll sue. He couldn’t, of course, but he could make things awkward. Eleanor, the mother, phoned up in a state. She said Melanie was delusional, in the middle of some sort of crisis. She needed to be in hospital. I offered to send in a community nurse but that wouldn’t do. By the time I could get there Gillespie had turned up. He said the same as his wife but more forcefully. I had to treat the girl as an inpatient.’
‘But you didn’t admit her?’
‘No. I wasn’t going to be bullied. I’d have liked to talk to Melanie alone but the parents weren’t having any of it and I didn’t think I could insist. It was an awkward situation. I was on my own. Sod’s law. I’d been trailing a female student around with me the rest of the week.’
‘How was Melanie?’
‘Angry. She’d had some sort of tantrum, throwing furniture around, smashing plates. It was over by the time I got there but I presume that was why Eleanor phoned.’
‘The anger was directed at her parents?’
‘That was the impression I had.’
‘Was it about the anorexia?’
‘Melanie used food as a weapon in every situation. But as to what triggered the scene…’ He shrugged.
‘Could it have had anything to do with her natural father?’
Collier looked up at him sharply then shrugged again.
‘I don’t know. By the time I arrived Melanie was very controlled and she wasn’t giving anything away. She insisted she didn’t want to be in hospital and I don’t have the beds to admit every young person who causes their parents grief. She was perfectly rational and I didn’t think she was suicidal. No grounds for sectioning. I made her an outpatient appointment.’
‘When for?’
‘I would have liked to have seen her immediately. Get her here, away from home territory. I felt there’d been some sort of breakthrough, that, you know, she trusted me for standing up to her father. But I couldn’t make it for a couple of days. I was speaking at a conference in Edinburgh. I gave her a chance to see a colleague but she wasn’t happy about that.’
‘When was the appointment?’
‘The morning her body was found in the cemetery.’
There was a pause. Porteous was aware of the patients in the waiting-room, their nerves twisting to breaking point as the minutes ticked on. He knew Collier was thinking of them too.
‘Had she ever been in Redwood?’
‘The assessment centre? Alice Cornish’s place? Not so far as I know. Why?’
‘One of our suspects was a social worker there. It would be a link. And that’s privileged information too, even if I can’t sue.’
‘They never said. I mean, I took a history. Schools. You know the sort of thing. But I didn’t check. Why should I?’ He paused, tilted back in his chair. ‘Redwood was an amazing place. I did a residential placement there. One of my options. There’s no reason why the Gillespies wouldn’t have admitted to her having gone there. It was harder to get into than Eton. Something for them to brag about.’ His eyes flicked to the clock on the wall and Porteous realized his time was up.
Outside the sun splashed off the big glass windows of the hospital and the superstore. His car, trapped between the buildings, was sweltering. He opened all the windows but didn’t start driving. He couldn’t face Cranford and Eddie’s obsession, the rest of the team expecting answers and leadership.
When he did start it was to go up the coast towards Stavely Prison, knowing he was running away. In the low fields on the coastal plain the combine harvesters moved relentlessly over the crop, followed by swarms of herring-gulls, as if the machines were trawlers. By the time he’d arrived he’d persuaded himself that the trip was vital. Hannah was still the best link they had between the killings.