Second Opinion (40 page)

‘I reckon!’ said a jubilant Cherry. ‘Well, did I get it right or did I?’

George leaned over and hugged her, and Cherry, after a moment’s tension, hugged her back.

‘You was right, you know,’ she said when she’d extracted herself. She looked up at George with a little grimace. ‘It does help.’

‘Pardon me?’ George was puzzled.

‘Doing a crossword puzzle. I said before I didn’t care who killed Harry. That finding out who it was and all that would just be a sort of revenge. But it’s not true, is it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ George said. ‘No. It isn’t. Getting the truth about something mayn’t change what happened, but it does help you. It’s why I do the job I do, I think. Needing to find out things. I can’t bear mysteries. At least —’ She stopped to think, then went on with some embarrassment. ‘I have to be honest, I love them really. As long as they’re solvable. I enjoy the business of sorting out the tangles. I’m the sort who’d take a plate of spaghetti and try to arrange every strand neatly if I could. There’s real satisfaction in untangling things, I guess. I might lose sight sometimes of
what it means to the people inside the mystery, though. People like you. I’m sorry if —’

‘You don’t have to apologize for nothing!’ Cherry said strongly. ‘I told you, I felt better sorting that out than I could have ever thought I could. Thanks for helping me, Dr Barnabas. You’ve been good to me. I’m ever so grateful.’

‘No need,’ George said gruffly, as embarrassed as if she’d been English through and through. ‘No need at all. Listen, Cherry, I need a bit more help. Will you type some more of that stuff for me? I need, oh, several rows with lots of space underneath. Then underneath, type the letters the way they should be OK? Then I’ll sit down with those sheets of paper I’ve got and it shouldn’t take too long to work out what’s really on them.’

‘Sure,’ Cherry said, and seemed a little embarrassed herself and glad to have something practical to do, and she set to work to provide precisely what George had asked for. A few minutes later, George had in front of her a sheet of paper on which had been typed several times:

‘Look at the bottom,’ Cherry said. ‘I’ve done it different there. It’ll make it easier for you.’

George looked again and smiled widely. ‘I should have thought of that,’ she said and looked at it appreciatively:

‘The spacing’s different so you’ll have to be careful,’
Cherry said. ‘But I reckon you should manage all right. Shall I help you? With the code? I mean, doing the pages you’ve got?’

George bit her lip and frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said candidly. ‘Oh, hell, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? But this is a murder enquiry and —’

Cherry looked stricken and George put out a hand to reassure her. ‘It’s all right, Cherry. No one thinks for a moment that you had anything to do with anything you shouldn’t, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that — it’s
police
work, you see. I’d be glad of help, to tell the truth, but I can’t let you —’

‘Oh,’ Cherry said. ‘I didn’t realize you were part of the police.’

George looked at her for a long moment and then grimaced. ‘Ouch. Well, OK, not directly, I suppose. Not the police. But I am part of the machinery of investigation. It’s normal for me to be part of the job police do. I don’t mean to suggest that you were in any way —’

‘It’s all right,’ Cherry said. She was beginning to lose the sparkle that the typewriter episode had given her, drooping again like a plant starved of light and water. ‘It doesn’t matter, after all.’

‘But it does,’ George said softly and put out a hand to pull Cherry to her feet. ‘Come on. Time to take that machine back. I’ll carry it this time.’ After a long silent moment Cherry looked up at her, nodded and got to her feet. She looked depressed again now, but at least, George told herself as she humped the heavy machine into her arms ready for the trek back to Maternity, it’s helped her a bit to be involved this far, even if I can’t let her help me with the deciphering. Maybe I’m being too careful; and for a moment she considered telling Cherry it was all right, after all, she could be involved, but then hardened her resolve. All her instincts were to keep any information she might garner for Gus before letting anyone else in on it,
and she trusted her instincts. It was an odd business, she mused, investigating a murder when you had to worry about the bereaved as well as the corpse.

29
  
  

George walked over to the police station via Wapping High Street, stopping on the way at the ‘Golden Palace’ where Lee Ho Chin, one of the regular patients in Mr Agnew Byford’s cardiology clinic offered special deals to the staff of Old East. It was her turn, she decided, to take food to Gus; high time she showed him he wasn’t the only one who remembered to look after the inner man and woman. Her lips quirked as the phrase came into her mind; it had been used by the Chairman at the Players Theatre that night, announcing the interval and time for refreshment for said inner residents, and she had a silly vision of a small version of herself, sitting somewhere inside her belly, looking up hopefully for what might be offered from above. It was amusing now to imagine a small Gus, sitting gloomy with hunger, waiting for something to make him feel better, and her step quickened as she saw the soft glow of light from the stained windows of Lee Ho Chin’s restaurant.

She sat and waited for her order as Lee, friendly and communicative but almost impossible to comprehend, chattered busily at her, and went on her way with her little carrier bag full of aluminium containers and a hot egg roll wrapped in a paper napkin, which Lee had pushed into her hand as she left. (‘To keep you warm as you go,’ he insisted.
‘Good luck for good lady.’) She ate it as she made her way through the icy streets. There were Christmas trees in the windows she passed, looking as bedraggled to her eyes as the ones in the hospital now that Christmas was over, but that sight didn’t depress her as it usually did. She was on her way to see Gus and that was an exhilarating thought.

She found him in his office, alone in the middle of the big department with its huddles of cluttered desks and battered wall charts and scattered files, and stood for a moment looking at him from the far doorway of the empty main room, which usually was occupied by the other members of the plainclothes division, and tried to analyse how she felt about what she was looking at. It was difficult. He looked endearingly crumpled, with his shirt sleeves pushed up above his elbows to show strong rather hairy forearms, and his hair was untidy, but at the same time he looked strong and reliable. She sighed. Better not to think too much at all about him. Just enjoy the way things were and wait and see.

‘Egg rolls,’ she announced as she marched into his office. ‘And chicken chop suey, and chopped prawn balls. Oh, and some noodles and a few prawn crackers.’

‘Wot, no sweet and sour?’ he said, not lifting his head from his work. ‘No won ton? What sort of a nosh-up d’you call that? We’d ha’ done better with some stuff from Leman Street. Nice bit o’ haddock, maybe? But that’ll do.’ He pushed his work away and stretched. ‘Beer with it, or a drop o’ tea?’

‘Beer, you ungrateful lug,’ she said, beginning to unload her bag on to his desk. ‘You don’t deserve anything. When you feed me, don’t I show a decent gratitude? Don’t I make it clear how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness? Don’t I —’

‘No you do not,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t. Hey, listen, what’s this? No chopsticks? Never mind — let’s see what we
can do.’ He pulled open his desk drawer to rummage and eventually came up with four chopsticks. ‘There! Knew I had some somewhere.’ He wiped them on the sleeve of his shirt and handed her a pair. ‘Dead hygienic now. Hey, this looks a bit of all right. I’ll forgive you the missing won ton and sweet and sour. This’ll do nicely.’

‘Where is everyone?’ she said as he filled his mouth with hot noodles. ‘Why are you on your own? Everyone out clue-hunting?’

‘I’ve sent ‘em home,’ he said and collected another mouthful. ‘On call if there’s any problems, but I saw no need to keep ‘em sitting here. There’s a uniformed watch on that can manage well enough. And my lads — well, it’s Christmas, ‘n’t it? I’ll work their butts off next week, but till the New Year’s behind us, it pays to be nice to the buggers.’

She smiled at him over her own noodles and said jeeringly, ‘So, go pull the other one three times till it plays ‘Yankee Doodle”! You’re just a softie, spoiling your guys because you’re a — well, a softie!’

He actually looked as though he were about to blush. ‘Not a bit of it. There’s not a lot they can do this time o’ night on either of our cases, and by some bleedin’ miracle there’s nothin’ else urgent at present. I’ll get the adoption boys back to the grindstone tomorrow, just you see if I don’t, and there’s the business of that damned car still to sort out.’

‘Ah,’ she said and put down her chopsticks. ‘I might have an answer to the adoption matter.’ And she looked at him with her brows up and her lips a little pursed, the picture of innocence.

‘What did you say?’ He spluttered over a particularly hot prawn ball. ‘You’ve got what?’

‘I’ve got a list of names and addresses of people who might have some answers for us,’ she said. ‘I broke the code, you see.’ She smiled at him beatifically and reached again
for her food and picked up, with considerable expertise, a pile of bean sprouts and chicken.

‘Get away!’ He was all attention. ‘So, give me the news! Don’t just sit there filling your face!’

She shook her head, smiling sweetly. ‘I don’t like talking with my mouth full,’ she said indistinctly. ‘You tell me first what you got out of Goss, then I’ll tell you what I’ve got.’

‘Like hell I will! You tell me what you —’

‘I was first,’ she said and scooped up more chop suey. He stared at her with his face a picture of chagrin and then threw his hands up in the air and said, ‘The hell with it. I’ll eat too.’

They did, in a greedy silence, until they’d cleared the little containers, and then he put down his chopsticks for the last time and quirked his head at her. ‘Right. Now start talking.’

‘But I haven’t finished,’ she said sweetly. ‘And you have. So you start, Gus dear, and then I’ll follow.’

‘You and I are going to have to do some serious talking one of these days,’ he said. ‘If it’s a fight for supremacy we’re going to have, then by God, I’ll give as good as I get.’

‘Goss,’ said George, making some play with her chopsticks as she chased the last mushroom round the little square dish. ‘What did he have to say? Could he talk at all?’

Gus gave up. ‘He talked. A lot, in fact.’ He opened his notebook on his desk. ‘Some of it was unrepeatable. Filthy language. We can get him if we want to on any amount of stirring-up-racial-hatred charges. Like this, listen: “If I have to break a few white heads and get into bed with communists I’ll do it for the NHS. Show ‘em what’ll happen if they don’t stop recruiting these black bastards, ruining our hospital. Once they see that black people cause riots and trouble they’ll have the wit to stop taking on so many. So yeah, I’ll start a race riot if I can. I’ve done it a few times, working with the blacks, telling them the whites are after
them. It always works, frightens the shit out of the Professor, it does.” Lovely stuff, isn’t it? There’s plenty more like it.’

Any hint of laughter had left George now. She put down her chopsticks and stared at Gus. ‘That’s horrible.’

‘You don’t say. Of course it is. But it’s what the man’s been doing with a few others around here. I’ve got names and addresses — it’s not been a wasted experience, believe me. They were
agents provocateurs
— making it seem they were on the black side as activists while encouraging all the unrest they could. They were very active lately because of Choopani’s fundraising, of course.’

‘And Harry’s murder,’ she said, her eyes bright. ‘What about that?’

He shook his head, closing his notebook and snapping the rubber band around it. ‘No joy, George. Sorry about that. Goss and his nasties were at a meeting that night. My lads collected statements from them all. Alibied to their ‘orrible eyebrows they are, the bleedin’ lot of ‘em. That’s a dead end. As dead as mutton. As dead as Harry.’

She looked down at her hands. ‘As dead as Harry,’ she repeated softly. ‘Oh, hell!’

‘Yeah. I wanted it to be one of them, of course I did, in that I want to find whoever it was. But it wasn’t Goss or his mate Prior — there’s a nice specimen I don’t think. South Africa can have him back any time — nor is it any of his collection of British Patriots, either. We’re back at the opening of the same old cul de sac. Got to start again, unless …’ He brightened. ‘Now it’s your turn. What have you got?’

‘Goodies,’ she said crisply. ‘Isn’t that what you call it?

She told him, propping her elbows amid the wreckage of their supper, her chin on her hands. Told him about Cherry and the typewriter and the James Bond movie, all of it, and he listened in silence, never taking his eyes from her face.