"It's a conundrum, Peter," Gilbert told him. "Where's the sugar?"
"Write to the Gazette," I suggested. "It's in the Coffee Mate tin."
Pete handed out beer mats and we cleared spaces on desks in the big office to make room for our drinks. Maggie came in, asked if it was a private party and we told her to join us.
"So," Gilbert began. "What's the state of play with the lady you have downstairs?"
"According to the doc at the hospital she's a classic case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy," I replied. "I've invited the child protection unit to talk to her — it's a bit outside my experience."
Gilbert sipped his coffee and replaced it on the desk, adjusting the position of the beer mat until it was just right. "Dodgy jobs, these involving mothers and babies," he said. "One wrong step and we're accused of misogyny, or matricide or something. Be careful how you go with this one, Charlie."
"Matricide's killing your mother," Pete told us. "There was a bad case of MSBP reported in Norwich earlier this year. Mother of twins and they had about a hundred visits to hospital and operations and all sorts before she was found out. There's probably more of it about than we realise. Doctors are not as aware of it as they should be."
"Dave's at her flat right now," I told Gilbert, cutting off Pete before he could start telling us more about the Great Norwich Twins case. "He reckons there were fragments of glass on the worktop and on the rug in the kitchen. He has a SOCO with him. If they find any glass we should be able to match it with that from the tin of food."
"Good," Gilbert said. "Good. That's what we want — good, solid forensic evidence. So how does this fit in with the Grainger's job? Was that her handiwork, too?"
"I'm afraid not," I replied. "The two are unrelated."
"That's a shame. What's the state of play there?"
"We're struggling. There's been no new case reported for over a fortnight, so the scare may be over, But we're no nearer catching the culprit."
"Anybody in the frame?"
"Not really. Chief suspect is the wife of the warfarin victim, but it's a long shot."
Gilbert looked puzzled, then said: "Oh, I see. She poisoned her husband's pineapple and placed the other tins on the supermarket shelves to divert the blame elsewhere."
"That's right."
"There was a similar case in America a few years ago," Pete informed us. "Poisoned her husband with stuff you clean aquariums with after taking out a big insurance policy on him."
"Have another word with her, eh, Charlie," Gilbert said. "It's a high profile case with a lot of public interest. People in high places will start asking questions before too long so we need to draw a line under it as soon as possible."
"The wife works at the electronics factory," Pete added, "soldering components on printed circuit boards. One of the contaminated tins of pineapple had been soldered."
"There you go, then," Gilbert said. "You have a volunteer."
Gilbert stumped off back to his office and Pete found the file and swatted up on the warfarin victim. I indicated for Maggie to follow me and carried my coffee into my little office.
"You didn't sound convinced about the wife," Maggie stated as she manoeuvred the visitor's chair to a more favourable position.
"No," I replied as I hung my jacket behind the door, "but it gets Pete out of the way. There've been too many cases for it to be her. The crime is the poisoning of the tins, not the poisoning of Mr Johnson. It's either done for pure mischief or it's aimed at Grainger's. Enough of that, what was Tenerife really like?"
She laughed. "It was brilliant, Charlie, just brilliant. You'd love the place. OK, so it's a bit chicken-and-chipsy in some parts, but it's incredibly beautiful in others. And the weather is gorgeous. That's what you go for, isn't it?"
"It's been sunny here while you were gone. You missed the summer."
"So I've heard. Ah, well, you can't have everything. And what about you? How have you been, Charlie?"
"Pretty good. A couple of juicy cases to solve, with no personal involvement. Old-fashioned detective work, just like we joined for. I've been enjoying myself."
"And the love life?"
"Um, looking up, Maggie. Looking up."
The phonecall came about ten minutes later. "That's brilliant," I said. "Well done," and "Keep me informed."
I replaced the receiver. "She's coughed," I said. "Mrs Norcup has just confessed to poisoning her son with broken glass."
"Congratulations," Maggie said. "More brownie points for the department."
She went to tell Pete and make some more coffee while I rang Gilbert. It was a tidy conclusion to a difficult case, but we didn't rejoice or jump up and down with jubilation at a crime solved. It was a sad ending, and two lives would never be the same again. I stood looking out of the window at the traffic down below, marvelling at the way it kept going without all piling into each other. There were simple rules. That's why it kept moving, and in each vehicle was a driver with a pair of eyes and a brain and a desire to survive. So they obeyed the rules, or most of them, and everybody rubbed along.
"Do you take sugar these days?" Maggie asked.
I turned around and held the door for her as she manoeuvred in, holding two more coffees. "I don't mind," I replied.
"What'll happen to her?" Maggie asked, when she was seated again.
"I don't know. Little Rory's going into care. Dave thinks the department should adopt him."
"Hey, that's a brilliant idea."
I found a KitKat in my drawer and broke it into two. "There's this woman," I said, munching on my half of the biscuit. "She's all alone in a house and has nobody to talk to all day. No neighbours, no friends. Her relationship, if you can call it that, is on the rocks and she's reached the end of her tether, so she decides to do something about it. She damages the person she says she loves. Does it make sense, Maggie? Why would a woman do something like that?"
"Who can say? When you're in an emotional state there's no knowing what the human mind can rationalise. People do things like that to attract attention to themselves. They have bleak, loveless lives. Abject poverty with no possible way out of it, never any treats, never the centre of attention. It must grind away at you, a life like that."
"But it's not the sole prerogative of the poor, Maggie. It happens to rich people, too."
"I know, and that's more difficult to explain. But you can still be well off and have a loveless life, be downtrodden. And poverty's relative, isn't it? Most of us realise that our lives are in our own hands, we can do something about them, but some people don't see that, or they're trapped. They make a cry for help. Slash their wrists, take an overdose. You've seen it often enough, Charlie."
"That's true, but money helps, doesn't it?"
"Usually, but not always. And I draw the line at damaging the baby. That's cowardly, unforgivable, in my opinion."
"The baby?"
"Young Rory."
"Oh yes, young Rory. No, Maggie, I'm not talking about Mrs Norcup. I'm not talking about her at all."
"Sorry, Chas, but you've lost me."
"How do you feel about having your hair done, in the firm's time, on expenses?"
"Now you've really lost me."
Chapter Thirteen
I collected the frames, tried them for size on the unfinished pictures and painted them white. It was looking promising. I filled in the loops of the letters in bright colours and gave some of them ears and tails, so they looked like owls, cats, mice and Mr Smileys. Typical doodles. I was enjoying myself. If I could have started again I'd have made the writing even larger, with only five or six well-selected words covering the board, but I was happy with the first attempt.