Night Visit (20 page)

But
I had noticed I felt none of my usual apprehension or discomfort. Rather I welcomed a confrontation. I wanted to see his face when I told him I knew the police had been wrong to release him. I wanted to tell him I knew he had murdered Melanie, that I knew why too. I thought things would soon be out in the open, not hidden any more.

Thank
goodness I didn’t.

His
face was pale and he was sweating. ‘I want to know what’s going on.’

‘
What do you mean, Mr Pritchard?’

‘
They aren’t allowing me to bury my mother. They say that you won’t authorise it.’

‘
Mr Pritchard,’ I said steadily, ‘it isn’t up to me but the coroner. I can’t give a cause of death so am unable to fill in the death certificate. No one knows what your mother died of.’

He
was breathing quickly. ‘You attended her not long before she died. She was an old lady in poor health. Isn’t that enough?’

‘
No,’ I said. ‘It isn’t. I attended your mother for a simple injury. There was nothing there that would have killed her.’ I was sure he was hiding something.

‘
My mother,’ he said, ‘was eighty-four years old. I don’t know why people have to be so curious about what exactly she died of that they have to hack open an old woman.’

‘
It is normal practice, Mr Pritchard, for any death that occurs within twenty-four hours of hospital admission to be brought to the attention of the coroner.’

I
had forgotten Pritchard was clever. ‘Brought to the attention,’ he said, staring at me. ‘That doesn’t always mean they have to have a post mortem.’

His
eyes were magnified behind the hyperopic glasses. His breath was on me, musty and old. I felt I was back in that stuffy claustrophobic bedroom, the faint smell of urine, the chill, the unopened windows, the Chinese coolie lampshade, swinging. ‘Why couldn’t you leave well alone?’ he said, with a venomous look. ‘It was all your fault. Why did you have to dig, ask questions, disturb old people? My mother and I had come to terms with things. We’d worked our lives out. Then you start by asking about my father. I knew it was upsetting mother when I said you’d asked. It made her nervous. She wasn’t herself after that.’

I
couldn’t help myself. ‘And Melanie Carnforth?’

Pritchard
went pale. ‘You surely can’t be thinking of dragging that all up too?’ A spasm of pain crossed his face. ‘Even the police had to admit I had nothing to do with that poor little girl. What’s it got to do with you, all these things? You’re a doctor. More than that you’re my doctor. You’re supposed to look after
me
. You have no right to make these accusations. Oh.’ He dropped his face into his hands. ‘What do I have to do to convince you I had nothing to do with that poor child going missing? It was nothing to do with me. I didn’t know anything about it.’

I
was silent. It suddenly hit me that I had overshot the mark. If Pritchard had made a formal complaint he would find a ready ear in the Medical Defence Union, the health authority, my partners... Neil’s face flashed across my eyes. He already had his doubts about the balance of my mind.

I
held my breath.

But
Pritchard had no real fight in him. He shuffled out of the room. Defeated. Or so I thought. I never saw a man look so guilty. Or so I thought.

At
the time my mind was still on the results of the tests on Amelia’s stomach contents. I knew they would contain traces of the muscarinic agent found in
Amanita
virosa
, the Destroying Angel. Later, I thought, I would ring the lab in Birmingham. I didn’t get the chance.

*

As soon as I had finished surgery they were waiting for me. Not PC Harper or the pleasant PC Wagstaff. This was a plain clothes detective with small, darting eyes that seemed to absorb everything in my surgery only to distort it. Sharply she introduced herself as Detective Inspector Angela Skilton before commenting on the state of my walls.

‘
Someone threw my plant pot at it.’ I was nervously wondering why she had come here. And I didn’t like the fact that she wasn’t coming straight to the point. ‘I’m having the room redecorated next week while my partner is on holiday,’ I added, wondering what it had to do with her anyway.

‘
I’m here about one of your patients,’ she said in her sharply acid voice. ‘Danny Small.’

‘
I saw him last week,’ I said. ‘Drugs overdose. How is he?’

‘
Dead.’

‘But…
’

‘
He died of an overdose of diamorphine.’

I
shook my head. ‘I thought the Narcan would have pulled him out of it.’

DI
Skilton took some time consulting her notes before looking back at me. ‘Would you mind explaining to me exactly what Narcan is?’

I
swallowed my surprise. I had a bad feeling about this one. ‘I diagnosed Danny as suffering from an overdose of opiates,’ I explained. ‘Narcan is the antidote. It’s as simple as that. He was comatose when I got there but the Narcan should have pulled him out of the coma. Reversed the effects?’ I wasn’t convinced I was getting through to her.

‘
I see.’ She wasn’t writing anything down. Instead she was eyeing me gravely. ‘And you gave him...?’

‘
A therapeutic dose of Narcan,’ I said patiently.

‘
Doctor...’ The clever eyes were fixed on mine. ‘Did you form any conclusion about the diamorphine?’

‘
Sorry?’

‘
PC Wagstaff,’ now she was consulting the notebook, ‘overheard you make some comment about the drug.’

The
fug in my brain cleared then. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The girl living there told me Danny had pilfered another doctor’s bag.’

‘
I see.’

‘
Do you know anything more about where Danny got the diamorphine from?’

‘
No.’

Clever
DI Skilton was shaking her head. ‘As you probably know, Doctor, the diamorphine supplied to doctors is pure,’ she said. ‘It’s pure and white.’ There was some point to her telling me this but I couldn’t yet work out what it was. ‘The stuff the dealers peddle on the streets is rough, comes from the fields of Central America, some from other countries. Afghanistan for instance. It’s brown.’ She licked her lips. ‘By the time the dealers have cut it it’s usually about twenty per cent pure—if that.’

‘
I know all this,’ I said irritably.

‘
The trouble is, Doctor, when the addicts get hold of the real, one hundred per cent stuff, they invariably overdose on it.’ She paused. ‘There is a death almost every time’

‘
And this time it was Danny.’ I was stating the obvious.

‘
Quite,’ she said. ‘I understand you had been having a bit of trouble with him.’

‘
Yes,’ I said uneasily, ‘but we were going to remove him from our list. He wasn’t a problem.’ I could not understand why I was so anxious to take this stance. Danny was a problem. He had angered me, frightened me, threatened me, robbed me. Of course he was a bloody problem.

She
was equal to this. ‘I understand removal from a doctors’ list normally takes about three weeks.’ Precise and hostile, she was checking her facts as she went along.

‘
Not if there’s violence involved, which of course there was.’

‘
In which case?’

‘
Immediately.’

She
leaned forward. ‘So why did you go out to him that night?’

I
licked my lips. I could see how this was looking.

‘
Why didn’t you just call an ambulance?’

‘
I... I...’ I found it impossible to explain. To tell this hard-nosed woman that I was a doctor and therefore owed Danny a duty of care would not convince her. Besides, it wasn’t the truth. I had relished the feeling of power of life or death over him.

Her
eyes were on me as she asked her next question. ‘Did you dislike the deceased?’

It
took a bit of adjustment thinking of Danny as ‘the deceased.’ I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not dislike the deceased. But I resented the time wasted dealing with drug addicts. We are trained to deal with genuine sickness. Not self-abuse.’

But
I knew these were transparent lies. I
had
disliked Danny. In fact I had hated him. 

For
threatening Rosie I had hated him. And as I had stood over him, unconscious, breathing noisy and deep, I had experienced a brief, gloating moment of power.

I
had looked at the barrel of the syringe and gloated in the knowledge that if I gave him the contents he would live. If not he would die. This was more just than the law itself, better than a weak jury, a benevolent, misguided judge. It had put the power into the hands of the victim, me.

Skilton
was watching me with eyes as piercing as an owl’s. ‘Tell me, doctor,’ she said. ‘How exactly does this drug…’

‘
Narcan.’

‘
How is it packaged?’

‘
It comes in a glass phial with a rubber bung.’

‘
Do you still have the phial?’

‘
No, I don’t.’

‘
So what happens to them?’

‘
I put them with the syringe and needles into...’ And I remembered the yellow plastic sharps box sitting on the passenger seat of my car. ‘My Lego Box’, Rosie called it.

Skilton
was reading my mind. ‘You discard them in a special container?’

She
already knew. The bitch had known before she had come into the surgery. I realised then that I was in trouble. ‘The one on the passenger seat of your car?’

I
nodded.

So
did she. Then she held out her hand for the car keys. ‘Would you mind?’

I
gave them to her.

‘
There’s another point I’d like to clarify with you,’ she said. ‘You say the diamorphine came from a doctor’s bag?’

I
was perhaps a little too eager to supply the information. ‘His girlfriend told me,’ I said quickly. ‘They had robbed another doctor’s bag.’

Skilton
shook her head. ‘Only yours, Dr Lamont. There has been no other report of a doctor’s bag being stolen. And in your report you mentioned no diamorphine.’

I
felt my neck grow hot. ‘There wasn’t any. I don’t think any of us keep that sort of stuff in our bags. It wouldn’t be justified.’

I
could see the suspicion grow in her face as well as hear it in her voice. ‘Well, as I said, we have no reports of doctors’ bags going missing—except yours.’ She was threateningly quiet for a minute or two before adding, ‘And then there’s this business of the Narcan you claim to have given.’

‘
I beg your pardon?’

‘
At post mortem they biopsied the tissue around your injection site.’

I
was angry at this professional snooping. ‘Why?’

‘
Because the physician who admitted Danny made the comment that he was surprised the GP had failed to administer the antidote.’ She was reading from her notes again. Every time her head dropped it had implications. ‘Look, doctor.’ Her tone was pseudo-conciliatory. ‘I’m no expert. I’m just a detective. I don’t know anything about any of the drugs except the ones that get flogged on street corners.’ She smiled and I realised that had been an attempt at a joke. ‘I’m just here to ask a few questions and try to clarify matters. Firstly. Did you have diamorphine in your doctor’s bag on the night that Danny Small threatened and robbed you?’

‘
No.’

‘
Secondly. Did you give the antidote to Danny when you realised that he was suffering from an overdose of diamorphine?’

‘
Yes. I did,’ I said. ‘Whatever the post mortem findings are I gave him an intravenous injection of Narcan. Police Constable Wagstaff saw me. It should have saved his life.’

‘
Thank you, Doctor,’ she said. She gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘There is just one other point I’d like to clear up.’ No need for her to read this from her pad. She knew this bit off by heart. ‘He’d made threats against your daughter.’ Her smile this time was bordering on chummy. ‘I’ve got a daughter, Dr Lamont. I’d hate anyone who threatened my daughter.’

I
wasn’t going to fall into that trap. ‘I didn’t take the threats seriously,’ I said.

‘
Ah,’ she said slowly, ‘but the investigating officer says you did. He said you seemed quite upset by them. So it must have been terrible for you to realise that we wouldn’t be pressing any charges.’