After Effects (14 page)

‘Someone lured him to his doom,' said Crosby sepulchrally.

‘Motive?' asked Sloan, since he himself had done some thinking overnight and, anyway, was supposed to be teaching the constable about criminal investigation.

‘Perhaps he didn't like his poor old father being experimented on.' The lack of objectivity of this observation was underlined by Crosby's next remark. ‘He struck me as being a bit of a wet.'

‘Wets don't usually have the bottle to murder anyone,' said Sloan, reminding himself to explain to the constable some time what a field day any defence counsel would have with a police officer who couldn't distinguish between fact and opinion. ‘Unless they're really pushed.'

‘Christopher Granger's into one of these animal rights groups, too,' said Crosby darkly, ‘and you never know what they'll do if they're pushed.'

To Detective Inspector Sloan there would always be one mystery that defeated him and that was the reason for man's inhumanity to man. And to his mind cruelty to animals came in the same category of utter and total inexplicability. As far as he was concerned as both a man and as a policeman both were quite inexcusable.

‘Abel Granger's
post mortem
revealed nothing but heart failure,' he countered, feeling this was no moment for taking this up with the detective constable.

Crosby sniffed. ‘That pathologist who's standing in for Dr Dabbe couldn't find a needle in a needle case.'

‘And is that fact or opinion?'

‘Didn't you know, sir? He's the one they use when one of Dangerous Dan's patients has gone and died on the operating table.'

Such cynicism about the medical profession in one so young didn't seem quite right. Sloan said, ‘What about the stun gas, then?'

‘Everyone's using it these days,' said the detective constable airily.

‘Except us,' said Sloan with feeling. Incapacitant sprays were quicker by far than the mayor standing on the town hall steps reading the Riot Act to the mob. They worked better, too.

‘Don't you remember, sir? Gilroy's had some stun gas stolen two attacks back. Theirs was a veterinary variety and they were trying to put the monkeys out of action so that they wouldn't escape—'

‘And the animal rights activists alleged they were trying to get them and not the monkeys. I remember all right,' agreed Sloan bitterly. ‘They tried to sue Gilroy's for common assault and it was a near thing with the Bench.'

‘You never know with magistrates,' said Crosby profoundly.

‘No,' said Sloan. Perhaps his own lessened faith in the magistrates was just a sign that he'd been a policeman too long. ‘Tell me, do you have any other candidates for interview after Christopher Granger?'

‘There's that Darren Clements and his little lot,' said Crosby promptly. ‘I've never seen a man look more like a ferret myself. I reckon, sir, that he was after something at Gilroy's, all right.'

‘Trouble?' suggested Sloan. He'd never known a trouble-seeker yet who didn't rationalize his goals and animal rights were as good as any.

‘This Cardigan thing that keeps cropping up,' said Crosby. ‘Perhaps there was something in it for him and his pals too.'

‘As far as I can gather,' said Sloan mildly, ‘all the trials for the Cardigan Protocol were being done on human beings.'

Crosby dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘That pompous businessman whose old mother died yesterday—'

‘Gordon Galloway.'

‘He had something funny written on his walls.'

‘Anti-animal research slogans.'

Crosby nodded. ‘Well, I saw that young lady doctor with the hair, like you said, sir.'

‘Dilys Chomel.'

‘She did have a call about Muriel Galloway,' said Crosby, ‘within earshot of Darren Clements. She was stitching him up in Accident and Emergency when they sent for her from the ward because Mrs Galloway had died.'

Sloan stared out of the police station window for a long moment. There was a thread running through the tapestry of all the activity round about Dr Meggie's death that seemed, wherever they looked, always to be pulling their attention back to Cardigan—or was it to Gilroy's Pharmaceuticals?

‘And someone, Crosby,' he said, ‘don't forget, notified us that Muriel Galloway had been on Cardigan. A woman, switchboard thought.' Where did Muriel Galloway come into all this, even if her death had been what Dr Dabbe had been pleased to call natural? He didn't know yet but he would find out.

‘Don't forget, sir, that it was a woman, too, who rang the Kinnisport Hospital switchboard about Dr Meggie not coming in yesterday morning,' said Crosby. ‘That stuck-up telephonist there is sure about it. Mind you,' he sniffed, ‘I reckon she'd have gone to the stake if it would have helped Dr Meggie. Proper heart throb he must have been.'

‘Some people get like that about doctors,' said Sloan wisely. ‘Don't ask me why. They never get crushes on policemen. Now, do you have anyone else in mind for questioning?'

‘The doctor's daughter,' said Crosby without hesitation. ‘Anyone could have got back to their house in Kinnisport from Willow End Farm, taken in the milk bottles or whatever and then got to the golf course in the ordinary way.'

‘Links,' said Sloan unfairly.

‘Links, then,' said Crosby, ‘before eight o'clock.'

‘And where would she have got the stun gas?'

‘Personal-defence canister,' said Crosby. ‘You can buy 'em anywhere you like on the Continent. Or, since her old man was a medico, perhaps he had some chloroform.' Suddenly Crosby contrived to look extremely worldly wise. ‘And you're not going to ask me about motive, sir, are you?'

‘No,' said Sloan. There had been too marked an absence of references by Bunty Meggie to ‘O My Beloved Father' for that. ‘And should we be talking to anyone else at all, do you think?'

‘The Merry Widow,' said Crosby without hesitation.

‘Any reason?'

‘Sorry, sir. I meant to tell you. I had a word with Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, like you said.'

‘The deceased's solicitors?'

‘That's right. They said that Dr Meggie had drawn up a will written in expectation of marriage.'

‘Ah—'

‘But not signed it.' He drew breath. ‘Sir, she might not have known whether or not he'd signed it—'

‘True.'

‘And she could have had an assignation over at Willow End Farm with the deceased.'

‘How would you account for the message by the bed?' enquired Sloan with interest.

‘A blind,' said Crosby largely. ‘Assignations have to be mysterious, don't they? And that address would fool the daughter.'

‘And Mrs Glawari,' mused Sloan, thinking aloud along quite different lines, ‘could have known Paul Meggie had a very poorly patient at Willow End Farm at Larking because he could have told her.'

‘Perhaps they always met there,' said Crosby. ‘Romantic spot, down by the river and all that.'

There had been nothing romantic in Sloan's eyes at the scene that had met him by the little river at Willow End Farm. Nothing at all. Just a man dead in middle age, the good car and the expensive suiting mere artefacts to an untimely end. Sloan had to admit, though, that the little clearing in the willows beside the stream would have been a good place for a secret meeting.

‘And her motive?' he asked. ‘Dr Meggie could have told Mrs Glawari he wasn't going to marry her after all,' said Crosby. ‘You know, sir, laid it on heavy that he couldn't leave his daughter on her own after all.'

‘It's a thought, Crosby, especially with hell having no fury like a woman scorned.'

‘I wouldn't know about that, sir, but I can't see any Prince Charming coming for our Bunty,' said Crosby frankly. ‘Not with those legs.'

‘No.' Sloan had to concede that White Knights were likely to be thin on the ground as far as the muscular Miss Meggie was concerned.

‘And I guess the other lady wouldn't have liked the daughter coming first.'

‘Definitely not.' Sloan stood up to go. ‘Puts a whole new meaning on the expression
femme fatale
, doesn't it, Crosby? Come on, let's go.'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

What you want is comfort, reassurance, something to clutch at, be it but a straw. This the doctor brings you.

While Saturdays were admittedly not usually working days at Gilroy's Pharmaceuticals—except for those who monitored the animals—this particular Saturday morning found both George Gledhill and Mike Itchen at the firm at Staple St James. Detective Inspector Sloan had been assured that it would be no trouble—positively no trouble at all—to meet him there with their side of the Cardigan Protocol reference numbers.

‘Have you got those figures from Dr Meggie's car all right?' Sloan asked Crosby as they approached the old mansion.

‘Copies, like you said,' answered Crosby. ‘Forensics are still playing with the real ones.'

Sloan grunted. He wasn't at all sure at this stage how they would be able to tell whether or not the figures had been dollied up. Or, if so, who by. But there were specialists enough in the Force who could work out anything. There were some financial frauds these days that were so clever that policemen had to go to business school to learn how to work them out. By comparison research results shouldn't be a problem.

‘There's only Paul Meggie's fingerprints on them,' Crosby assured him.

‘That's something, I suppose,' said Sloan in a world where very little else seemed straightforward.

‘Oh, and one thumb print of his secretary's on the top page.' He screwed up his face in an effort of recollection. ‘Forensics said to say there's no sign of any of the figures having been messed about with but they'll have another look to make sure.'

If Sloan knew Forensics they would have put it more elegantly—let alone more scientifically—than that. ‘And you've found both Muriel Galloway and Abel Granger on the list?'

‘Named with a number beside them.' Crosby patted the parcel under his arm. ‘And some notes of how they were doing.'

‘Badly,' said Sloan, since he wasn't a doctor and saw no need either to mince his words or to hedge his bets.

‘All it doesn't say,' said Crosby, ‘is what was in that stuff he gave them.'

‘Perhaps we shall find out,' said Sloan none too hopefully.

Both chemists were waiting for the policemen in the front entrance hall.

‘I thought we'd adjourn to the conference room,' said George Gledhill as they clattered over the imitation classical black and white marble floor tiles. ‘No one else is using it today.'

He led the way along a downstairs corridor and into a vast room built in the Anglo-French Renaissance style. There were Doric columns in scagliola at the far end and on one of the side walls a mahogany and brass scoring board.

‘Used to be the billiard room,' explained Gledhill.

‘Designed to keep the young gentlemen of the house away from the maids.'

‘And the maidens,' contributed Itchen.

‘Quite so,' said Detective Inspector Sloan austerely. ‘Now, we have here a note of Dr Meggie's records and would like to know if the two patients who died yesterday and who were on the Cardigan Protocol had been having the test substance or the placebo.'

George Gledhill projected eagerness to help but it was Mike Itchen who unfolded the computer printout. ‘If you can tell me the numbers on Paul Meggie's list—it's his first series, you understand.'

Crosby ran his finger down the paper. ‘Galloway, Muriel, 4203.'

Itchen said ‘Placebo,' and Detective Inspector Sloan wondered then why it was that the police had an anonymous telephone call about her being on the drug programme and someone saw fit to write anti-research slogans on her son's garage door.

‘And Granger, Abel, 3940,' read out Crosby.

‘Ah,' said Mike Itchen. ‘Granger was on the real McCoy.'

‘They both died,' observed Sloan drily.

‘They were both going to die anyway,' countered Gledhill swiftly.

‘They had nothing to lose, you see,' Itchen came in antiphonally.

‘Paul Meggie always hand-picked his candidates for any research he did. That was what made him the best man for this job,' said the Chief Chemist.

‘Conscientious and discriminating,' supplemented Itchen like a Greek chorus.

‘So Cardigan didn't do Abel Granger any good, then,' said Sloan. He was beginning to think it hadn't done Dr Meggie any good either but that was something different. ‘And so,' he added, rather like the converse of a theorem, ‘perhaps not having it did Muriel Galloway no harm, would you say?'

‘Does—did—Dr Meggie put anything about that in his notes?' asked Gledhill circumspectly.

Sloan peered over Crosby's shoulder. ‘Only that they both suffered an immediate and appreciable weight loss. Nothing more.'

Gledhill nodded sagely. ‘That would help in heart failure, of course. Always does.'

‘Less work for the heart to do,' chimed in Itchen, almost on cue.

‘You understand, Inspector, that we should have liked a little more positive feedback from Dr Meggie than that.' The Chief Chemist leaned back in his chair. ‘Here at Gilroy's we're at the leading edge of medical research.'

‘I appreciate that,' said Sloan, unmoved. As far as he was concerned he was at the cutting edge of a search for a murderer and in his view edges didn't come more cutting than that.

‘Now, we'd be all right,' lamented Gledhill, ‘if we concentrated only on late-stage medicines.'

‘Drugs for the dying, you mean?' asked Crosby suddenly coming to life.

‘No, no.' Gledhill smiled thinly. ‘Late-stage medicines are where nearly all of the groundwork has already been done and the efficacy proven.'