Dying to Know (11 page)

‘I just can't believe it,' she kept saying. She was genuinely upset, almost crying, and I loved her for it.

‘What I can't believe is that the police think he's capable of smacking someone repeatedly on the head.'

‘I'm sure that when they've checked the fingerprints, it'll prove that he's innocent.'

She was endlessly optimistic, endlessly positive; in that regard she was like a child and it made me want to protect her. It would have been cruel not to agree with her. ‘Of course.'

But what I really meant was that it wouldn't matter if he didn't get through this, and the probabilities were against him. I knew neurosurgeons, knew that they were choosy when it came to their patients and then, even if he fulfilled their stringent criteria, the odds were not those one would choose. I had not told Max this, could not have told her because I am fundamentally a rather nice person.

The registrar came in. He was Australian, tall and fair; I thought I noticed signs of interest on Max's face and found myself skewered by jealousy.

‘Mr Elliot?' he asked. His accent was broad.

‘
Dr
Elliot, yes.' I hated myself for saying it; hated myself even more when he grinned knowingly and said without a trace of apology, ‘Sorry, Dr Elliot. My name's Ed Keeping.
Mr
Ed Keeping.'

I ignored his attitude problem. ‘What's the verdict?'

Max was sitting beside me and I felt her move closer to me, which helped all round. His face became grave and my insides became cold. ‘He's got a massive subdural causing severe midline shift. He's in serious danger of “coning”.'

Max whimpered. ‘Coning' is as lethal as the axe that severs a head. I waited, wondering if that was it, if this man who had the ability to read out a sentence of death on Dad was going to do just that. I am sure that he wasn't being deliberately sadistic when he seemed to be pausing, to be assuming an expression of supreme graveness before he said, ‘We're prepping him now. I'm sure that we can relieve the pressure.'

Max squealed with delight and burst into a huge smile. ‘Oh, thank goodness!' she said breathily, her eyes filled with awed reverence as she gazed upon Mr Keeping's countenance and he smiled back at her. As elated as I felt at this reprieve, and as dependent as I was upon his surgical skills, I felt like smacking him in the gob.

We managed to get one last glimpse of Dad in the anaesthetic room before he went into surgery. Smith was standing outside and tried a sympathetic smile as we went in. Dad's head was encased in an elasticated bandage under which, I guessed, someone had shaved his head; his face looked far, far paler, even closer to death and I realized with foreboding just how quickly he was marching down the road to the end of his life. Max was openly crying as I squeezed the old fool's hand and wished him good luck. Then the anaesthetist moved in and, picking up the same hand, held it by the wrist and slapped it to bring up the veins. With practised ease, he took a green butterfly cannula from an assisting nurse and inserted it into one of them; as he withdrew the needle, it filled with blood. I watched as he pressed the plunger of the syringe, forcing the blood in the tube back into the body, mixing with the anaesthetic. Although there was no visible change, Dad was now anaesthetized and paralysed. The anaesthetist quickly put a laryngoscope into his mouth and used it to guide an endotracheal breathing tube into place; this was in turn connected to a manual breathing bag which he squeezed regularly while the nurse taped the tube in place. With this done, Dad was ready to be wheeled into the theatre, and to have his head opened.

He was in theatre for six hours, a quarter of a day in which I felt as if I were in complete sensory isolation, the rest of the world without meaningful existence. Max fell asleep, contracted into a foetal curl, mouth open to just the right degree to make her, under almost all other circumstances, impossibly attractive. I tried to sleep, perhaps I even succeeded, but it was the lightest, most inconsequential brush with the arms of Morpheus, and it was without effect. When I prowled the room, I was tired enough to cry, yet when I lay back in a stiffly upright chair upholstered in bright-red PVC, my brain throbbed with awareness.

And the more that I waited to hear if my father would live through the night, the more I began to wonder just what was going on. I knew my father and I knew therefore that he would no more attack someone with a hammer than he would run naked through a nunnery, which meant that whatever he had been doing round at the Lightollers' house, it had been innocent and misinterpreted by witnesses. What followed from that, therefore, was that despite the evidence, there had been someone else in the house, the real murderer. It did not take an intellect the size of a planet to deduce from all this that whoever had bashed Mrs Lightoller over the head had also run her spouse through with an antique pattern sword.

That, though, proved to be a temporary stop upon my deductions, for it brought me back squarely and inevitably to the problem that, once again, my father was the only one who had been seen in the vicinity at the estimated time of death.

I had a horrible feeling that the next time I spoke with Masson, he would be informing me with quiet satisfaction that the only fingerprints found on the hammer and in the house generally (apart from those of the Lightollers) belonged to Dad. I wondered then what he would do. Would he consider that sufficient evidence to cease serious investigation of the two deaths? Would he wait for my father to recover and then charge him? Of course, if he didn't recover, he would not be formally charged, but he would die a murderer in the eyes of the world . . .

Thus the night passed, seeming to become slower and more turgid with every minute, threatening at any moment to stop completely, perhaps to die there and then, leaving me in stasis, condemned to oblivion.

The first sounds of a hospital waking up began to come through the door: the odd echoing call, something metal falling to the linoleum floor, the quick clipping of footstep heels past the room, an increase in the noise and volume of traffic outside the frosted glass of the window as grey light began to seep through it.

Max was just coming round when the door opened and in came our Australian neurosurgeon. He was dressed in light-green theatre ware, a silly disposable balaclava around his head, a mask hanging loosely around his neck. He looked very tired, almost morose.

I stood up, Max uncurled and sat bolt upright; both of us stared at him, waiting, wondering.

‘Well,' he said with a tired drawl. ‘He's made it so far.'

FIFTEEN

E
veryone was very understanding when I phoned and said that I wouldn't be in. The receptionists – Sheila and Jean – were charged with contacting all my appointments that day and seeing if any could be rescheduled for a later date and between them Jack and Brian said that they would handle my calls. As it was Friday, that meant that I had three days off work to try to begin work on clearing my father's name.

I returned from the public call box to the ward where Dad now reposed to find Max sitting beside him, holding his hand. Also present was DC Smith, looking official. I said to him, ‘Hello, constable.'

He nodded. ‘Sir.'

Dad had shown no sign of returning to consciousness but, we had been warned, that might not happen for several days, perhaps even weeks. What had not been said, but was clearly evident between the lines, was that it might not happen at all. To Smith I said, ‘I don't know why you're here. I don't think he's faking it. He's not going to do a midnight flit on the
Orient Express
, you know.'

And Smith, taking it all as seriously as ever, said, ‘Just doing what I'm told, sir.'

Max asked, ‘Did you get through to the surgery?'

I explained the arrangements. ‘What about you?' I asked. ‘What about your work? You're going to be late.'

She looked at her watch; it was just after eight. ‘I'll never get there in time now and, in any case, I'm too tired to be any use. I'll have to ring them and tell them what's happened. I'm sure they'll understand.'

We agreed that there was no point in hanging around by Dad's bed and, leaving instructions with the nursing staff to call if there was any change, we left the ward and I showed Max where the phone was. I left her making the call, then went out of the main entrance, intending to wait by the car for her. Masson, though, was just coming in.

‘Dr Elliot,' he said.

‘Inspector.'

‘I was just coming in to see how your father was doing.'

I told him the situation. He nodded and then his face twitched into what might have been a grimace, might have been a smile. ‘Well, that's something, I suppose. It's not all bad news.'

I couldn't feel quite as positive as that, but said something non-committal. Max came up and joined us just as Masson, after what I could only describe as an embarrassed pause, said, ‘The results of the fingerprint tests are through.'

‘And?'

That twitch again, which told me the answer before he opened his mouth. ‘Your father's prints are the only ones on the hammer handle and, apart from Mr and Mrs Lightoller's, they are the only ones anywhere in the house, including the French windows at the back.'

So, I had been right; somehow, I wasn't surprised. There was a pattern here, and this new piece of information fitted it exactly. I said tiredly, ‘You surely can't believe that my Dad's guilty of these murders.'

When I said this, Max's mouth fell open; I hadn't told her the details of Dad's accident and, most particularly, I had not told her that all of the available evidence put him in the dock for two murders. Masson, predictably, seemed to consider my doubts to be both superfluous and incomprehensible. ‘Can't I?'

‘Surely it's obvious. Someone's framing him.'

Masson asked, ‘Really? Who?'

To which I had no answer.

Then, frowning deeply, he asked in a falsely curious tone, ‘Whilst we're about it, why? Why would anyone want to frame your father?'

I wasn't sure and he knew I wasn't sure. It was surprising for both of us when Max suddenly said, ‘Maybe because he saw something at the first murder scene.'

For the first time, perhaps, Masson took her in and looked at her seriously. He appraised her for a moment, then turned back to me. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?'

We showed him into the waiting room where we had spent the night. He looked around, grunted, then sat down; Max and I did likewise. Masson fiddled in his coat pocket, I would guess for cigarettes; I'm not even sure he was aware that he was doing it. Eventually, he said, ‘All our enquiries have failed to reveal any sign of anyone coming to the shop during the time in question, except for your father.'

‘You can't prove a negative.' I knew as I said this that, by resorting to scientific principle in a case of murder, I was backing a hopeless cause.

Masson did exactly what he should have done and ignored me. ‘The door at the back of the shop was locked.'

Max chipped in, ‘Someone could have come to the back and been let in by Lightoller. Then left the same way after killing him. Was the key in the lock?'

‘No . . .'

‘Have you found the key anywhere?'

‘It's on the windowsill by the door.'

This rather deflated Max for a moment before she rallied with: ‘Is there a window by the door?'

‘There's a fanlight.'

‘Was it open?'

Masson clearly objected to being the questioned rather than the questioner. ‘It was ajar, on a latch.'

Max pounced. ‘Then, whoever it was let themselves out, locked the door and then dropped the key on to the sill through the fanlight. Easy.'

Masson did not bother to conceal his annoyance. ‘Enough of this fantasy. No one else was seen entering the shop either from the front or the back, except your father. He has now been found unconscious at the scene of a second murder, with his fingerprints on the murder weapon. No one else has been implicated in either death.'

I was tired of hearing all sorts of reasons why my father should be number one suspect, while the only reason that counted – that he was a good, decent and honourable man – was being ignored. ‘And I say again, this is totally and completely ludicrous! My father is innocent!'

Masson shook his head but instead of entering into a debate on the point, he said gently, ‘I haven't got anything against your father, you know.'

It was an odd thing for him to say and seemed out of character; I didn't know how to respond and it was Max who said, ‘You could have fooled me.'

‘Perhaps you might understand if I give you a bit of background.'

She snorted. ‘I doubt that.'

Masson stared at her; he had such pale eyes that, when he stared at you, you felt as if he were doing more than merely looking, more even than assessing, as if he were looking into you and seeing things that he shouldn't be able to. Max stood up as well, staring at him in return and after a while he just grunted softly, and smiled.

‘What do you know of the Lightollers?' he asked.

‘Not much.'

‘In which case, let me fill you in on them. Oliver Lightoller was sixty-nine, his wife, Doris, was sixty-eight. He's owned that antiques shop for thirty-seven years, starting it just after the war. He had originally worked as an apprentice for a firm of auctioneers in Bromley, where he learned the trade. He met Doris when he fell and received facial injuries whilst redecorating the shop not long after he acquired the lease; he was taken to Mayday Hospital where she was a casualty sister.