Dryden didn’t really know why he asked the next question. ‘Is that charge nurse ever Gaynor Stubbs?’
Bloom’s eyes flickered over the notes before him: he coughed and avoided a direct answer. ‘Your wife was checked by the physiotherapist at 5 p.m. today. She did undertake some work with her arms and neck, which she recorded when she returned to the nurses’ station. When she checked again at 5.45 p.m. your wife’s body was very nearly out of the bed, she had turned over on her right side and one arm was hanging outside the bed.’
‘No one else could have got into the room?’
Bloom clasped his hands tightly as though restraining temper. ‘All visitors must sign the book and there are security cameras, as you know, in the main corridors.’
Dryden thought of the open window: and beyond, the spreading darkness of the monkey-puzzle tree.
‘Can I see her?’
Bloom led the way. A nurse was reading beside Laura’s bed. Bloom tapped a pen against the VDU screen: ‘The level of brain activity is slightly higher – perhaps five per cent more than normal at this time of the day compared to the average over the last two years.’
Dryden sat and took up Laura’s hand. If she’d turned to the right, as the physiotherapist’s evidence implied, she would have been reaching for the pictures on the bedside table. He felt a stab of hope.
‘What next?’ But he knew the answer, loathed its Kip-lingesque preachiness.
‘We wait and watch, Mr Dryden. Time…’
‘… is the great healer,’ finished Dryden.
‘We shall, with your permission, install some monitoring equipment so that we can pick up any movements and record them. Then we can work on the limbs that seem to be most active.’ Bloom took Dryden’s indifference to this request as the signal to leave.
Dryden leant in close to Laura’s face: as close as he’d been in two years – but not quite touching. His lips were almost on hers: he spoke to them. ‘I wonder,’ he said, aloud.
He walked to the window and tried to lift the sash. It moved smoothly letting a sudden cold blast into the stuffy room. Out in the dusk the monkey-puzzle tree glittered with frost.
Dryden poured two fresh glasses of wine. He replaced the bread and some of the fruit, turned the lights off and sat looking out into the gardens. Beyond the high wall he imagined Humph waiting in the cab.
‘Humph sends his love.’ His voice was too soft and the sentiment came out half-hearted and limp. He turned to the bed in apology and repeated himself. ‘You’ll meet him one day – you’ll like him. There’s a lot to like.’
There was a knock at the door and DS Stubbs’s head appeared. He still looked crisp and neat at the end of a fifteen-hour day.
‘Sorry. I have to scoot. Could we meet now?’
Despite Laura’s immobility it was unthinkable that they would use the room for a private chat – an inexcusable admission that she was more an object than a silent witness.
They slipped down the corridor to the hospital’s heated pool. There was no one swimming in the cool Radox-green water. A cluster of plastic chairs was arranged on the pool-side beside an automatic drinks machine. Dryden paid for coffees. The pool glowed with underwater lighting. They sat for a moment in the dappled light, the only sound the faint hum of the electric pumps, which creased the surface with miniature waves of vibration.
Body language was a study Dryden enjoyed. At the moment Stubbs’s was all wrong. He leaned forward in his chair, hands together, attentive. He wanted something, and it made Dryden wary.
He also seemed unable to begin the conversation. Dryden decided to get what he could as quickly as he could. ‘So. Our man in the car – details?’
‘Prelim, autopsy results show time of death to be around twenty-four hours before the body was hauled out of the Lark, an entry bullet wound at the back of the skull and an exit through the mouth. That’s where all the blood came from. None of this came out at the press conference by the way – you didn’t miss a thing.’
‘Bullet wound?’
‘Yup. The traumatic injuries to the neck came after death. There are some threads of heavy rope – similar to that used to attach the iron pulley to one of the ankles. Doc thinks the body was hanged after death, causing the rupture of the neck muscles and the snapped spine at the base of the skull.’
‘But otherwise he was perfectly healthy?’
Their laughter rebounded off the white tiled walls. It was easy to be cynical about the dead. Stubbs showed tiredness for the first time. He closed his eyes and rested his head back over the chair. Above him the sickly reflections of the pool weaved themselves across the ceiling like a slow-motion disco.
‘Yup. A picture of health if he wasn’t on a mortuary slab. In his fifties. Naturally tanned skin, well-developed muscles and tendons, lean torso. Liver clean as a whistle, no sign of cigarettes. Exceptional lung capacity in fact. His skin suggests an outdoor job. Good quality blue overalls, woollen socks. One oddity.’
Dryden tried not to look interested. He already had enough for a decent story and the words ‘off the record’ didn’t mean he couldn’t use the information. He’d just leave Stubbs’s name out of the paper.
‘Despite the clean liver a high level of alcohol in the blood.’
‘So the killer got him blitzed first – anything else in the blood?’
Stubbs gave the reporter a look which just might have been admiration. ‘Sedative. Pretty massive dose apparently.’
‘Tricky slipping a Mickey Finn to a complete stranger – suggests he knew him well?’
‘Suggests,’ agreed Stubbs, adjusting the strangulated tie.
‘The ropes?’
Stubbs was reddening slightly at the cross-examination. Not so much at the implied insubordination as its expertise.
‘Best lead we’ve got. Cut roughly after death with a knife. The pathologist reckons he must have dropped at least thirty feet to produce the neck injuries. In which case there’s a long cast-off lying around somewhere. Two short lengths were cut to fasten the pulley to his foot.’
Dryden cast around for a line: ship’s ropes, haulage ropes, bell ropes, tug-of-war?
‘Odd chemical traces on the ropes: chlorine and machine oil mainly. Lab at Cherry Hinton is doing a full set of tests now.’
Dryden breathed in the vapours of the swimming pooclass="underline" ozone, no hint of chlorine.
Stubbs tried to read Dryden’s face and failed. The medieval features were blank.
‘What about the hands on the victim – prints?’
‘Checking. Anyway, the killer appears to have made at least one mistake. On October 31st, the day before the victim was found, the blue Nissan Spectre was involved in a road traffic accident on the Littleport by-pass. Just after 10 p.m. There was a shunt at the roundabout and he got whacked in the boot by the driver behind.’
‘Hell. Do you think he had the body in the back?’
Stubbs ignored the question. He unwrapped some spearmint gum and began to chew audibly.
Dryden cracked his fingers one by one. If they were going to play irritating noises he’d win.
‘Driver behind reported it because our man in the Nissan Spectre wouldn’t give his name – instead he offered the bloke £50 cash to get lost and save his no-claims bonus. He thought the damage would cost more than that to repair. Chummy drives off but our man gets the registration number.’
‘And a description of the driver?’
‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’ Stubbs stretched his legs. He looked tired and worried: the prospect of the approaching police tribunal seemed to be giving him sleepless nights. Dryden felt better. ‘The witness is a teacher from one of the secondary schools in town. Intelligent bloke, mid-thirties, all his faculties. But about as observant as this plastic cup.’