Witchmoor Edge (14 page)

"So I gathered, inspector. I'm not sure how
much help I can be - he wasn't my patient you know, although I did
see him occasionally."

Millicent was caught off guard. "I didn't
realise he was a patient of this group, as a matter of fact," she
said.

"Mrs Hunter is registered with me. Mr. Hunter
was registered with someone else in the practice - Doctor Wells, I
think."

"I was going to ask you some questions about
another of your patients, but the new information raises some
interesting possibilities."

"I'm not sure how much I could tell you about
a live patient," Doctor Leverett said. "Probably very little
without breaking confidentiality. However, about a dead one I may
be able to be a little less scrupulous. What did you want to
know?"

Millicent rearranged her thoughts. "You said
you saw Mr. Hunter occasionally," she said. "When did you last see
him?"

"Wednesday of last week, to give the results
of some tests taken at hospital ten days before that."

"Do you know, or had you any reason to
suppose, he was a regular drug user?"

"Recreational drugs you mean. Not that I'm
aware of. I do have a reputation for work in the field," Doctor
Leverett said. "I think I would have heard."

"What, as a matter of interest," Millicent
asked hopefully, but not really expecting an answer, "were the
hospital tests about."

The doctor paused. She took of her glasses
and tapped the end of the frames on her mouse mat thoughtfully. "I
suppose there's no harm in telling you since he's dead," she said
at last, "Though I certainly couldn't tell you if he was alive
unless he gave permission. He had advanced prostate cancer which
had already spread to various organs and was terminal."

Millicent was stunned. Whether it made any
difference to her investigation depended on who else knew. Prostate
cancer is a big killer amongst men; though early forties are
definitely on the young side to be a victim. "I see," she said and
continued, "More confidentially, do you know whether Mr. Hunter was
violent towards his wife?"

"I won't go into any details without my
patient's consent," the doctor said, "but yes He had offered
physical violence on a number of occasions."

"And finally," Millicent said, "Are you
currently prescribing methadone to Rosie O'Connor?"

"Yes," Doctor Leverett said. "And I certainly
will not say anything more than that without her consent."

"I'm simply confirming something she already
told me," Millicent said. "Her statement was to the effect that she
became a heroin addict, dried out in a clinic and was using
methadone to ease a final withdrawal."

"I can confirm the statement in general
terms," the doctor said.

"You've been helpful to me," Millicent said,
and got to her feet.

"There is one thing more," Doctor Leverett
said. "I am aware that my husband and Sheldon Shields saw Mr.
Hunter dead, up on the edge of the moors. I am aware that both the
man and his car disappeared after they saw him. I read my papers.
As Hunter lay dead but uninjured he must have been poisoned with
something and I do not have to be Sherlock Holmes to realise that,
with me as a doctor, my husband cannot fail to be a suspect" She
smiled ruefully. "I can only say that I didn't help him and I don't
believe that he did it anyway."

Millicent smiled back. "You've been frank as
well helpful," she said. She held out a hand. "Thank you for your
time."

They shook hands and Millicent left to meet
Tobias N'Dibe.

Chapter 9: Wednesday 15th August
(Evening)

Lucy Turner pulled up her car outside the
block where Alice Dent and Ellen Barnes had their flat, parked it
and went to ring the security buzzer.

Ellen Barnes was on late shift at Bradford
Royal Infirmary and consequently not home, but Alice Dent was there
and let her in.

"I have to check on some of the things you
told us," Lucy began, as she sat down in the lounge and took out
her notebook. "I told you I would have to be extra thorough to
satisfy myself, and my boss turned up a couple of anomalies I can't
explain."

"Go on," Alice Dent said, quite
neutrally.

"You are diabetic - yes?"

Alice nodded. "Well," She said, "Not me but
Ellen."

"But Shirley Hunter isn't and Simon Hunter
wasn't."

"I wouldn't know."

"Yet among the items on at the picnic site
and on the till slip from Ellen's shopping expedition with Shirley
Hunter was a jar of diabetic jam."

Alice shrugged. "Our jar is still here, in
the kitchen." She got up and went into the kitchen. Lucy heard her
rummaging in a cupboard and returned with a jar of jam, opened and
about a quarter used. Alice held it out.

"As you see," she said. "Opened and partly
used."

There was no way of telling whether it was
the same jar, of course, but it was the same jam and could easily
have been opened since Saturday.

"Diabetic strawberry jam," Alice said. "Ellen
gets through a fair amount. I don't. I'm a peanut butter person
myself."

Lucy wrote down the brand, variety and net
weight and glanced at the best before date. Unsurprisingly it told
her nothing.

"Okay," she said. "There were other items at
the scene that appeared on that shopping list as well."

"Such as?"

"There were a couple of tubs of yoghurt."

Alice shrugged again. "Supermarkets sell an
awful lot of yoghurts. It's just coincidence."

"Let's leave that for the moment. When the
jar and the tubs were fingerprinted they had no fingerprints but
Simon Hunter's on them. No cashier at the supermarket, no Shirley
Hunter's, it looked to the Scene of Crime people as though they had
been carefully wiped clean before Hunter"s prints were put on
them."

Alice waited.

"This casts some doubt on Shirley Hunter's
version of events and, therefore, on Ellen's story," Lucy said when
the pause had become long enough to need filling.

"Ellen picked up Shirley Hunter on the main
road." Alice sounded a little irritated. "She never saw the picnic
area or commented on it."

This was true. Ellen's statement had said
nothing about the picnic site and claimed never to have been
there.

"Did you check the time of Shirley Hunter's
mobile phone call?" Alice asked.

Lucy checked her notebook, where she had
indeed written down the time, to check it out.

"14.08. 8 minutes past 2, and the call lasted
just over 4 minutes."

Alice didn't comment and Lucy looked at the
other time involved: the time on the till receipt. 14:46.

"How long would it have taken Ellen to drive
to where Shirley was waiting," Lucy wondered out loud, not really
asking a question.

"I've no idea," Alice said shortly. "You'd
have to ask Ellen."

Of course she would, Lucy thought. There were
serious holes in Shirley's story, but the inconsistencies didn't
amount to proof. Not yet, anyway.

"You said you were an electrician."

"Yes."

"What are you working on at the moment?"

"We've just started the wiring of a new
factory in Guisley."

"And before that, did you have anything to do
with the old warehouse in Canal Street?"

"A couple of us popped in there last week to
cut off all electrics before Yorkshire Electricity cut off the
whole building. It was going to be demolished."

"You were inside the building?"

"Of course."

"When?"

"Thursday afternoon last week."

Lucy changed tack, covering the other point
worrying her, though her boss hadn't specifically mentioned it.

"You said you drive?"

"Yes, though I use a motorcycle most of the
time."

"Do you drive at work?"

"Occasionally. There are vans for tools and
equipment. I sometimes drive one and I'm sometimes a passenger.
More often I ride the motorbike."

"But you have access to vans?"

"I could drive one if I arranged it, but I
didn't do last Saturday, if that's what you're getting at. Check
with the transport foreman."

"I think I will, just as a matter of
eliminating possibilities. I told you I was going to be extra
thorough, so nobody could accuse me of going soft on you, not even
me."

Alice nodded. She understood, even she didn't
like it.

"Thanks for your cooperation," Lucy said,
rising. "I think that's all for the moment, but I may need to speak
to Ellen again."

Alice Dent got up too, and let her out
without further comment, just a polite 'goodbye'.

* * *

Millicent turned in at her drive and pulled
up to the house. A restaurant was fine for a meeting, as she had
said over the phone, but it was too public for anything more than a
chat.

Tobias N'Dibe pulled his car up at the side
of the road a moment later and walked in after her. Millicent
thought that the lawn could use another mowing at the weekend, and
considered again the possibility of getting a gardener. She let
herself into the house and held the door open for the big
African.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"Decaffeinated, please," said N'Dibe, and he
sat down as Millicent went into the kitchen to put on the electric
percolator. She put a couple of scoops of decaff coffee grounds
into the metal basket and wondered again whether to splash out on
one of the combined machines that froth the milk as well. She
flipped the switch and turned.

"Okay," she said from the kitchen door. "I've
told you I need to locate the Porsche, but you haven't told me how
you're going to find it."

"I am not going to find it," NDibe said. "You
are. It is possible I could do it. I have experimented with various
peripheral skills and have done such things quite successfully in
the past. However, it is you that has an uncontrolled psychism
which disturbs you and probably your colleagues as well."

The coffee finished perculating and Millicent
put the perculator on a tray with the cups, milk and sugar. She
carried the tray into the living room and poured without saying
anything. There was a slight tension in the atmosphere that didn't
lend itself to conversation but, as Millicent sat down, she said,
"All right. So what do you intend to do?"

N'Dibe was always slow and measured. Now he
took a sip of his drink, added a little more sugar, stirred it and
took another sip to satisfy himself. Only when his drink was to his
satisfaction did he look at Millicent and reply.

"Remote viewing, as done by experienced
viewers in the US Army experiments, required no special preparation
or equipment," he said. "Just around fifteen minutes of relaxation
into the right frame of mind. However," he continued, "we want to
bring your natural talent under control at the same time. I am
going to use music and a theta pulse, against which background I
intend to give some accompanying instructions and commentary to put
you in touch with you own higher self."

"You mean hypnotism?" Millicent said
doubtfully.

"Not at all," N'Dibe answered. "Apart from
any question of efficacy in these circumstances, we are trying to
establish your control over your experiences. To do that you must
be in full charge of your own consciousness."

He produced a CD from the diminutive
briefcase by his side. "In a minute or so I shall play this CD. The
music has a pulse under it and the rhythm of your brainwaves will
follow it. You have a player handy?"

"The music centre," Millicent said.

N'Dibe nodded. "Put the CD in, but don't
start it yet," he said

Millicent took the CD, turned on the music
centre and put it in. "All you do is press the play button," she
said, indicating a clearly marked button. "Now what?"

"I want you to sit down in an easy chair and
relax completely."

Millicent sat down and leaned back. She
didn't feel all that relaxed. "What do I do with my hands?" she
asked.

"Place them one on each thigh. Now screw your
muscles up as tensely as you can. First you lower legs, then your
thighs. Now relax them. Tighten all the muscles in your stomach and
back, then let them go."

Millicent obeyed, tensing herself and
knotting her muscles, then relaxing them.

"Now your shoulders neck and face. Tense all
the muscles and then relax."

N'Dibe crossed to the music centre a pressed
the play button. Soft, rather aimless music and a steady pulse
began.

"You are going to relax no more than actors
before an improvisation or Accelerated Learning students before a
language class," N'dibe said. "The pulse you can hear is about that
of a normal waking brain wave. We're just going to slow it down a
little."

"Breathe in and hold it ... Let it out
slowly, feeling all the tensions in your legs drain away. Breathe
in and hold it ... Let it out slowly, feeling all the tensions in
your arms drain away."

NDibe had a deep and pleasantly melodious
voice and Millicent did as he said, feeling luxuriously relaxed,
but in no way surrendering control. The pulsing sound was
slowing.

"Close your eyes and imagine you are walking
along a path in the warm sunlight," he said. "Birds are singing and
there is the sound of insects. There are trees and flowers and
there is the sound of water flowing somewhere off to the left. The
path runs through a valley and you follow it, but it turns uphill,
gently at first, then more steeply."

The pulsing sound was much slower now and it
was easy for her to see the images in her minds eye.

"The path climbs steadily now, with steps at
the steeper points. 1! You are climbing up the side of a high hill
or low mountain. 2! You are still relaxed and climbing the path
requires no effort. 3! Ahead of you, higher up, is the wall of a
building or enclosed garden and the path ends at a door. 4! The
door is slightly open and a doorkeeper stands watching your
approach. 5! He or she is silent but friendly and welcoming. 6! You
are nearly at the top, still relaxed and enjoying the climb. 7! As
you approach nearer you make a gesture of greeting and the
doorkeeper bows slightly in acknowledgement. 8! You are there.
9!