The meeting with the chief super and Major Rutherford had soured Valentine’s mood. He had not been particularly cheerful before, was not even in the vicinity, but now an angry rook was pecking at his mind. There would be more to come, CS Martin had been undermined, and to make matters worse, in front of someone she clearly had a need to impress. It didn’t matter whether she was taken with Rutherford’s accent and old-school-tie bonhomie or just the cut of his jib, the result would be the same. Valentine saw the case slipping away from him, he was losing control.
‘Here, you drive, Sylvia.’ He handed over the car keys.
‘Yes, sir.’
Valentine rarely let anyone drive his car but he needed time to think. As he got in the passenger’s side he found there was no space for his legs. He wanted to stretch out, but as he pushed his back into the fixed seat he groaned. ‘Bloody hell …’
‘All OK, sir?’
‘How do you put this back a bit?’
‘There’s a wee bar that you press. It’s under the seat, sir.’
Valentine fumbled for the lever. ‘Where about?’
‘Here, let me.’
As Sylvia reached under the seat to release the chair Valentine looked away, scanned the car park. There was no one there. ‘Good job Ally and Phil never saw that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They think we’re on.’
‘On, sir?’
‘It must be an Ayrshire expression. They think we’re getting a bit close, spending too much time together.’
‘Oh for God’s sake. It’s only the nature of the case, they should realise I have experience of this sort of crime from Glasgow.’
‘Well if they don’t they better get used to it. I can see all of us burning the midnight oil from here on.’ He fastened his seatbelt. ‘Look, I meant to say, about the other day with Crosbie, thanks for that.’
‘No bother, only trying to help.’
Valentine played with a cuff-button and watched the road ahead as they approached the King Street roundabout. ‘Well, there’s help and there’s help. That sort of thing’s well above the call of duty.’
‘Most of what I do is,’ she grinned to herself.
Valentine gave a knowing nod. ‘I don’t know if it was the meeting with Crosbie or what, but I’ve not had any funny turns since.’
‘Is that what you’re calling them now?’
‘Seems to fit. Mind you, the way this case is going I could do with the help.’
DS McCormack glanced in the rear-view mirror and pulled onto the bypass, the car started to accelerate. ‘Well, we have Sandra Millar now and this Leask lead could be promising.’
‘Promising for who, us or Eddy Harris? I don’t trust him and the way things are shaping up Dino’s likely to put me out to grass and hand the lot over to Harris.’
‘She wouldn’t do that.’
‘Wouldn’t she? I’ve seen her tricks first-hand and she’s capable of a lot worse, let me tell you.’
‘But Harris isn’t as senior an officer as you, doesn’t have as much experience. She wouldn’t dare.’
‘Trust me, if these cases are linked then it’s a possibility. We need to be ahead of the game, ahead of bloody Flash Harris.’
‘I’ll get a hold of the case files from the Meat Hangers robbery when we’re done at the hospital. I’ll go over them tonight.’
Valentine tapped his fingers on the rim of the window-ledge, a smattering of rain had started to fall making the grim Ayrshire setting seem worse than usual. ‘The robbery was on the same night and our victim worked there; if we have Tulloch at the club earlier in the evening then that’s something for us to go on. What’s Leask saying about Tulloch’s death, has he got previous form with him that might tempt theft? You’ll have to dig for any animosity because I presume it won’t be obvious or Leask’d have just given him his jotters.’
‘I’ll visit the club and sniff around the staff. I’d suggest a covert visit but I don’t think we’ve got the time to set that up, sir.’
‘Just brass it out. Go in heavy, get the complete personnel list and run them all through the system. If there’s any with convictions for violence, run them through the mincer. If there was bad blood between Tulloch and anyone, even in small amounts, I want to know about it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The detective dropped his voice, took a more contemplative tone. ‘Just bear one thing in mind, Sylvia, if we end up sharing an incident room with Eddy Harris the only way we’re going to keep the good biccies on our side of the table is by making him look like an absolute bloody muppet.’
Darkness had fallen by the time the detectives reached the hospital. A queue of vehicles waited to enter the car park, their disgruntled drivers watching in disbelief as DI Valentine pointed McCormack into the emergency bays at the front of the building.
‘Are you sure about this?’ said the DS.
‘It’s an emergency isn’t it?’
‘Well …’
‘Sylvia, if murder isn’t an emergency then what is?’ She didn’t look convinced. ‘And anyway, who’s going to ticket a DI?’
‘Point taken.’
They headed for the front door of the large, well-lit building. The hospital had not been there long, was close enough in recent memory for Valentine to remember when it was still farmland, but the exterior looked worn and weather-beaten already. Peeling paint and sun-faded window frames highlighted by bright spotlighting. Inside, the reception desk was through a further set of automatic doors, a blonde-wood facia – there seemed to be a design theme – covered the wall either side of the corridor.
‘When did hospitals start to look like branches of Ikea?’ said Valentine.
‘I’ve no idea, sir. But they do now.’
‘Bet you wish you’d bought those shares in allen keys, eh?’
The receptionist pointed the detectives to the lift and said she would ring ahead to the ward to let them know the police had arrived. She was balancing the receiver on her shoulder, speaking in an unnatural volume to rise above the clamour of voices around the desk, as they left her. On the third floor, more blinding light and a powerful antiseptic smell greeted the officers. Valentine got as far as the middle of the long corridor, following the numbers on doors, before he stopped still.
‘Where’s our uniforms?’ he said.
‘There doesn’t appear to be any here.’
‘That’s what I mean. There should be. Ally should have had one on the door, this is a bloody murder suspect.’
McCormack looked the length of the hallway and back again. ‘Maybe he tried to put someone on but was overruled.’
‘I don’t think so, Sylvia,’ Valentine looked through raised lids, ‘unless Dino’s opened a rolling expenses spreadsheet for this case alone.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’
‘No, neither would I. But I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, given that she’s been otherwise engaged all day with her new major friend.’
‘I’ll check it out, sir.’ McCormack removed a notebook from her bag and started to scribble.
‘Do that. And make sure it’s round-the-clock surveillance, I don’t want Sandra Millar left alone when she’s already got a habit of going walkabout.’
As they reached the door to the patient’s room a man in a short-sleeved shirt, a lanyard with an ID badge around his neck flapping, started to jog to meet them. ‘Hello, you must be the police officers.’
‘You must be the doctor?’ said Valentine.
He tapped the badge round his neck. ‘No getting anything past you – Ben Caruthers.’
‘Shall we go inside, Doctor?’
‘Before we do, can I just say, she’s not in the best condition.’
McCormack returned the notebook to her bag, said, ‘I thought she was lucid now.’
‘I don’t know if I’d use quite that term. She’s conscious, but she’s very confused.’
‘What are you trying to say, Doctor?’ said Valentine, sensing a note of over-caution from the doctor.
‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is that this woman has been through a serious trauma.’
‘She was knocked over by a kid on a scrambler, not a double-decker bus. And he was hardly up to ninety in the pedestrianised area of the High Street.’