Witchmoor Edge (22 page)

"We're sorry to disturb you at work,"
Millicent said. "We've just come from talking to your brother. He
told us what happened last Saturday, in particular why he thought
he'd killed your husband. Now I'd like to hear the details which he
couldn't give us."

"You mean, what happened before I drove round
to his house and after he left?"

"Among other things, yes."

"Simon said he wanted a picnic, like I told
you. I went out to get some bits and pieces around eleven. When I
got back he was already in foul mood about something. I said
something - I don’t know what - to make matters worse and he threw
the jack handle at me. It missed me and I threw a tub of yoghurt at
him. That missed too, but he flew into an awful rage. I got back
into the car and turned it around. He came at me with the jack
handle so I drove the car away, hitting him as I left, but I don't
think it was very hard."

"Anyway, I drove round to Bernard's and I was
just telling him about it when Simon drove up in the Porsche. He
got out of the car ..."

"How did he get out?" Millicent interrupted.
"Did he jump out?"

Shirley looked as surprised as Knowles had.
"N-o-o," she said slowly. "He was acting sort of drunk, I suppose.
Staggering around. Perhaps he got more hurt than I thought when I
knocked him down."

"Was he drunk or could he perhaps have taken
a morphine overdose?"

Shirley Hunter looked puzzled rather than
relieved. "He looked all right when I left him," she said.

"But it could have been an overdose?"

"Obviously."

"Were you aware that your husband had been
diagnosed as having a terminal cancer?"

Shirley Hunter looked so surprised that Tommy
thought she couldn't be faking.

"I knew he'd had hospital tests about
something," she said. "But I didn't know about that."

"Didn't you ask him what the tests were
about?" Millicent asked, a little sceptically.

"If Simon didn't want to tell me something
there was no use in me asking."

"Was your husband a drug addict?"

"My husband was a great many unpleasant
things," Shirley Hunter said. "I'm not aware that he used any drugs
beyond cannabis. It wouldn't surprise me that much, but there was
no sign."

"Was his rage last Saturday out of the
ordinary?" Millicent asked.

"He was often violent and bad tempered,
always in a rage about something. Saturday he excelled himself.
I've never seen him quite so bad, but often nearly as bad."

"Okay," Millicent said. "Let's turn to the
other important area you can throw more light on. What happened
after your brother left the picnic spot?"

"Not much," Shirley said. "When Bernard had
gone, I climbed over a wall and walked through some trees and hid
well out of sight. I saw my car go that would be Bernard. I heard
the other vehicle start up and drive off. I went back to the
Porsche. Or to where it should have been, but it was gone."

"Gone?"

"Gone!"

"Did you hear it start?"

"No. But it was quiet when it was just
ticking over, so I possibly wouldn't have heard it."

"Did you hear or see anybody?"

"No."

"So you phoned Ellen Barnes?"

"The rest is as I told you right at the
beginning."

Tommy Hammond had been listening in silence.
"Where was the mobile phone?" he asked now.

"In my hand. When I ran off, I took my
handbag and mobile phone with me."

"And what about the yoghurts and things
Inspector Hampshire found at the site?" he asked.

"I thought Bernard had told you," Shirley
said. "Bernard wiped them free of fingerprints with a cloth from
the car and I held them against Simons hands and threw them into
the bushes. I was going to put out the things for the picnic when I
heard this other car."

Tommy turned to Millicent. "Won't be a
minute," he said. "I'm just going to the toilet. Is all right to
use the one just by the day room entrance?" he asked Shirley.

Shirley nodded.

Millicent waited until the door had closed
behind him and then asked Shirley, "Was Simon left handed."

"No," she answered, evidently surprised by
the question.

"Then why did Simon use his left hand to
inject himself with morphine?"

Shirley did not answer.

"I'll tell you what happened," Millicent
said, "and you can confirm the story while there are no
witnesses."

Shirley still did not answer.

"After you knocked him down Simon gave
himself a dose of heroin and then came after you at your brother's
house. The syringe was still in the car and so was the heroin or,
more probably some morphine, and I think I know where that came
from. The brawl between Simon and your brother took place more or
less as he told it, except that your husband wasn't dead. Up at the
picnic site he started to come round. You mixed the heroin with
water from the car radiator and gave him the overdose. You probably
used disposable gloves or just wiped the syringe clean and put
Simons prints on it. You know well enough how to use one."

"You were interrupted by Shields and Leverett
arriving. What you intended to do was make it look like a picnic,
but you hadn't time."

"The picnic things were still in the
Porsche," Shirley said. "But I didn't inject him. The bit about him
coming round is wrong. He was dead?"

"Are you quite certain of that?"

"I know death when I see it - it's my
job."

Millicent remained sceptical. "I still think
it happened the way I described it but I can't prove it - unless
you want to make a formal confession in front of a witness."

At that moment Tommy Hammond came back into
the room and Shirley shook her head dumbly.

"All right," Millicent told her. "You can
finish your shift, but you'll have to call in to the station and
make a revised statement. You realise that concealing a body is a
criminal offence and the CPS may consider that you've obstructed
the police?"

Shirley nodded. "I must get back onto the
ward," she said. "We're short staffed this weekend. I'll call in
about the statement. I come off shift at two."

As they went back down in the lift Tommy
noticed Millicent shuddering.

"What's the matter," he asked.

"Memories," Millicent said shortly, and then
added. "Hospitals always smell the same, whether you're in Bradford
or Seville."

Tommy didn't say anything, but he was shrewd.
He knew that Millicent had lived in Spain and that she was a widow.
He didn't know the details, but he could guess a lot.

As the lift reached the ground floor and the
doors opened, Millicent remarked, "I think we'd better check with
Doctor Leverett whether she actually prescribed morphine to Hunter
and how much."

"Doctor Leverett?"

"Hunter saw her last Thursday. She told me he
had a terminal prostate cancer. I was so taken aback that, like a
fool or a complete rookie, I forgot to ask whether she prescribed
Hunter any morphine."

"It could be where he got it, I suppose,"
Tommy agreed as they walked out to the car park. "But it's
potentially suspicious that Shields and Leverett were the last ones
to see him."

"The probability seems to be that Hunter got
the overdose about twelve twenty, between Shirley leaving their
house and him leaving."

As they got into the car Millicent was silent
and far away. When Tommy asked he where next she didn't answer.

"Where next?" Tommy repeated.

"What?" Millicent demanded startled, then
smiling added, "I'm sorry. I was miles away. It’s thirteen years
ago, almost to the day, since Carlos was blown up in a car bomb
incident. I was with him when he died in hospital and they always
seem to get me that way. Drive us back to Witchmoor Edge
Headquarters. I'll see if I can get the information over the phone
from Doctor Leverett."

"We could stop off there you know," Tommy
said. "I remember Leverett saying his wife had a Saturday morning
surgery and the Bradford Road Health Centre isn't out of the
way."

"Okay," Millicent agreed, just a shade
reluctantly. "Let's try the lady herself, though the receptionist
is a bit of a dragon."

"Leave her to me," said Tommy.

Millicent smiled to herself, but said
nothing.

"I'm really sorry to bother you when you're
obviously so busy," Tommy said, giving the severe looking
receptionist one of his most charming smiles. "We need to get one
more tiny piece of information from Doctor Leverett. We won't keep
her or you from your real work for more than a moment."

"I'll see if the doctor can fit you in," said
the woman, defrosting slightly for Tommy but giving Millicent a
glare.

"Thank you so much," Tommy said sweetly.

The receptionist behind her glass screen
picked up the phone and rang through, presumably to the doctor.
After a moment she said to Tommy, "Doctor Leverett is just
finishing with a patient right now. You can go through as long as
you don't keep her long."

"We won't, Tommy promised and gave her
another knee-weakening smile.

Doctor Leverett looked busy and slightly
harassed. She was keying some information into the computer and
pushed a strand of hair out of her face as she looked up.

"Sorry to barge in on you again," Millicent
said. "This will really only take a few seconds."

"Go on then," Gwen Leverett said.

"When we talked last I was so surprised by
what I learned that I forgot something so obvious a beginner should
have thought of it."

"What's that?"

"Mr. Hunter was seriously ill. Did you
prescribe any drugs?"

"Yes. He was in quite severe pain at times
and should have been hospitalised."

"Which drugs?"

The doctor turned to her computer and made
several mouse clicks, saying as she did so, "I rather think it was
a propriety brand containing methylmorphine as the active
ingredient ... Let's see ... No. I prescribed the codeine before,
but the last one was straight morphine in tablet form. I advised
him not to drive after taking them."

"Was there enough to kill him?"

"It's certainly possible if he took the lot
straight off. Two thirds would have been enough to make him
seriously ill within an hour or less, but a shot of Naloxone would
have cured him. Cured him of the effects of the drug, that is. It
wouldn't have had any effect on the cancer."

"How imminent was his death from the cancer?"
Millicent asked.

"A month or two at the most," the doctor
replied.

"Thank you Doctor Leverett. Once again you've
been helpful. Thank you for seeing us at such short notice."

They got up. Tommy gave Gwen Leverett the
kind of smile he had given the receptionist and they turned to
go.

"Your colleague has a very good bedside
manner," Doctor Leverett remarked. "Good morning to you both."

Outside Millicent said, "Doctor Millard said
the morphine had been injected and we found the syringe with
Hunters fingerprints. You can't inject tablets unless you dissolve
them."

"Like Heroin?"

"Suppose he started feeling some pain as a
result of throwing that metal thing at Shirley and being knocked
down."

"Sounds likely," Tommy agreed.

"Then he gave himself a shot of morphine
before chasing after her. He would have been on his last legs when
he got to Knowless and died there."

"Could be, I suppose."

They arrived at the car and Tommy let his
boss in.

"Back to Witchmoor Edge Headquarters," she
said.

Back at the station, Chief Inspector Cooke
was hovering on his day off and several of the team were around.
Millicent bustled about.

"I think we have this more or less wrapped
up," She said to Cooke. "But it's not going to be nice and neat,
I'm afraid. Tony, I want you to go out, pick up Knowles and charge
him with concealing a body. Take a full statement and do the
paperwork. Lucy. You're on tomorrow, so what you can do is pick up
Rosie O'Connor this afternoon and charge her with either possession
of, or procuring heroin. There's no evidence against her except her
own word, so take a full statement. Take Matthew Bright with you,
but once you've dealt with it, you can leave Matthew to take her
back and leave yourself. You can type up the statement and do the
paperwork tomorrow."

Millicent picked up a new folder from her
desk.

"DC Goss. Gary," she said. "There are new
cases coming in and this one is over except for the tidying up.
Here's a new one. I want you to zip over to Saint Luke's Hospital
in Bradford and get a statement from a hit and run victim. She
handed DC Goss the file. I've no idea why they took her there from
Witchmoor town centre, but seemingly they did. Her name is Sandia
Begum and she apparently has a broken leg and pelvis. Get a
statement from her and have a snoop round for witnesses. Lucy can
take over tomorrow, so make sure your notes are legible. This looks
like a time consuming job on Monday."

She began to shoo her team out. "Go on," she
said. "Grab a quick bite if you haven't had one, then let's get
this enquiry finished and out of the way."

When the others had gone either to the
canteen or the car park, Millicent turned to Chief Inspector
Cooke.

"I'll wait around for Shirley Hunter to come
in. We have evidence and her confession to concealing a body, so
I'll charge her with that. However, that's all we can charge her
with."

"You sound as if you think there's more,"
Cooke commented.

"I'd say she knows who took the Porsche and
the body to Cartwright's Wharf and I'm pretty sure she knows who
started the fire, but we're not going to prove it."

"Hmm."

"Look, the real crook is dead, a young thug
is drowned, a drug pusher killed in a fall and we're going to do
another thug for car theft."