CHAPTER EIGHT

It seemed Smythe had had second thoughts about his lies, for when they got back to the hospital, they found a note pushed under the outside door to their office. But arresting Smythe, even if he was the murderer, wasn't a prospect likely to fill Rafferty with triumph. If he had been a hunting man, Smythe was the kind of catch he'd have left for the dogs. Still, he reflected, as he picked up the internal phone and dialled Smythe's number, it would be a relief to get his first murder case wrapped up. But there was no reply. 'Probably sitting up there in his office wetting himself,' Rafferty said. 'Let's go and see.'

Smythe's first floor office was small and rather cramped. The walls housed a display of achievements; his medical qualifications, and pictures of him at various stages of his school career, prep-school, university and in a white coat outside some unknown teaching hospital. Each time, he was flanked by a man and woman; his parents presumably.

'You wanted to see us, Dr. Smythe?'

After passing his tongue over dry lips, Smythe nodded miserably. 'I suppose Gilbert's spoken to you?'

'You suppose right. You shouldn't have told us lies, Doctor. Did you really think we wouldn't find out the truth?'

'I meant to tell you, I'd gone into your office fully intending to, but I lost my nerve.' He licked his lips again. 'I thought you might be glad to pin it on me, especially as Dr. Melville-Briggs had offered you a bribe.'

'I didn't take the bribe,' Rafferty was quick to point out, annoyed that his morals should be questioned by Simon Smythe.

Smythe looked relieved at this. 'But I didn't know that,' he explained. 'I was called away just then. I'd been watching from my office window and all I saw was his hand go in the pocket where he keeps his wallet and the confident expression he usually wears when he gets his own way. I was a gift, I thought. I was sure you wouldn't believe me if I told the truth. Once I'd told you the first lie, I had to go on. I didn't know what else to do. I found the body, you see, and I suppose I just panicked.' His face looked bloodless and his mouth opened and closed spasmodically, but no words came out. Indeed, he seemed to have trouble breathing and appeared on the verge of collapse.

As Rafferty waited for Smythe to recover, he became aware of the steady tick of the clock on the wall. It was a sturdy looking thing, perhaps a survivor from the days when the house had been used as a private school. It had a paternalistic air; its large, round face reminiscent of a jolly schoolmaster. Smythe didn't seem to find the deep, paternal voice of the clock any comfort. He sat staring down at the hands clenched in his lap, as though a thorough study of them would provide him with the answers he needed to convince them of his innocence. With difficulty, Rafferty kept his features as rigid as Llewellyn's. Sitting either end of the desk as they were, he imagined they must look like a pair of particularly malevolent bookends.

The clock on the wall ticked away another thirty seconds, then, suddenly, Smythe slumped pitiably in his chair as though the weight of their suspicions was too much for him. 'I suppose you think I killed her?' Desperately, he searched their faces for signs of denial, seeing none, he slumped even lower and his hands gripped the arms of his chair as though they were the only things that stood between him and disaster. 'I knew it. I knew everyone would think I did it. That's why I kept quiet. I've been such a fool. I didn't do it, you know.' He began to wring his bony hands. 'You must believe that I didn't do it. You must,' he repeated in a voice hoarse with fear and desperation.

He looked more like a frightened rabbit than a suspected brutal murderer and Rafferty almost reached out a comforting hand, but then a picture of Linda Wilks's destroyed face flashed into his mind. For all that she had been a part-time hooker, she was the innocent victim in this, she the one deserving of sympathy. He would do well to remember it. 'You were the duty doctor that night. You told us yourself you were expected to stay on the premises. Why didn't you?' He leaned forward until his face was on a level with Smythe's. 'What happened when you brought her back here? Did she laugh at you? Is that why...?'

Smythe shook his head violently. 'No, no, you've got it all wrong. I didn't bring anyone back here. Not the dead girl nor anyone else.'

'You abandoned your responsibilities to go to the pub. Why? Did you have an appointment with Linda Wilks for later?'

Smythe shook his head again. 'I only went out for a drink. I didn't expect to meet anyone.'

'Don't take me for a fool, Dr. Smythe. I know enough medical men to know that they are always careful to keep a ready supply of drink to hand. Where did you keep your Dutch courage? In your desk or the filing cabinet?'

'In the desk.' He raised his shoulders and then let them fall again. 'I'd run out. That's why I went to the pub. You don't understand,' he told Rafferty. 'You don't know what it's like.' He looked down at his clenched fists, loosening and tightening them spasmodically, as though unaware of their movement. 'I hate it here.'

'Then why don't you leave?' But even as he asked the question, Rafferty realised that for a man like Smythe, it wasn't that easy. He was hardly the type to impress a selection panel.

'Don't you think I've tried?' The nervous aggression returned briefly, but as though he realised it would gain him no sympathy, he sank back in his chair and his voice quietened. 'It's not that easy. I wanted to be a vet, you know?' He grimaced. 'I've never been very good with people, but my parents had set their hearts on my becoming a doctor. I didn't have the guts to disappoint them. They'd sacrificed so much to give me a decent education. I went into psychiatry because I felt the patients would be less threatening, I hoped I might be able to help them. I was wrong, of course. They've no confidence in me.' He shrugged despairingly. 'I've no confidence in myself, so why should they have any? Not that Melville-Briggs's open contempt does me any favours, either.'

'If he thinks so little of you, why does he keep you on?' asked Llewellyn, coolly logical as usual.

Smythe laughed bitterly. 'Because he gets me cheap, Sergeant. He doesn't let me near his private patients, of course, but I'm good enough for the NHS patients the Health Authority can't accommodate.' His eyes watered self-pityingly. 'Sometimes I think I'm destined to remain here forever as his whipping-boy. That's why, sometimes, I need to escape, so I go up to the pub. It's not far. It's warm, friendly and unlikely to appeal to Melville-Briggs. And, for a time, I'm able to forget what a mess I've made of my life. I don't do it often,' he defended himself. 'Only—only, when...'

Only when you've booked a tart and her services, Rafferty added silently to himself, and needed something more than thin blood in your veins. Smythe's attempt at self-justification collapsed and he became vindictive.

'Just because I was unlucky enough to find the body, doesn't make me a murderer. There's one or two others who could have done it. Dr. Whittaker at The Holbrook Clinic, for instance. From what I heard, Melville-Briggs made Whittaker as mad as blazes last Friday night. And he left the dinner early, looking murderous by all accounts. Whittaker would have done anything to get back at him. Then there's Allward the Charge Nurse. He gets up to a few tricks at night, I can tell you. Have you checked their alibis?'

'But they weren't in the pub with a dark-haired girl that night,' Rafferty reminded him, deliberately ignoring the fact that Smythe had been with another girl, a stranger. 'You were.'

‘But I bet none of them in the pub claimed that the girl I'd been with was the one who'd been murdered,' Smythe retorted.

'No,' Rafferty conceded. 'But neither did they confirm that Linda hadn't been in the bar that night.' He fully intended to have the other drinkers in the bar questioned, but from what the landlord had said, their testimonies wouldn't be any more reliable and, for the moment, he discounted the witnesses' inability to tie Smythe in with the victim. Linda Wilks might or might not have been in the pub that night, but she was certainly dead, the likely time of death tied in with the time Smythe had left the pub, which was just a few hundred yards down the road from the hospital.

'The girl was murdered in the hospital grounds, not the pub,' Smythe defended himself. 'Anyone could have killed her.'

'Hardly. Not everyone has a key to that side-gate,' Rafferty reminded him quickly, though Gilbert had done his best in that direction.

'Charge Nurse Allward has. He could have brought the girl into the grounds. He's done it before.'

'Why didn't you report him, then?' Rafferty demanded bluntly. Had Staff Nurse Estoce suspected something similar?

Smythe shrugged. 'Why should I? I don't feel I owe Melville-Briggs any loyalty. But neither do I feel my contract includes being a patsy for his convenience, which is why I'm telling you these things now. It would suit him just fine if I was charged with the murder. I'm only on a short-term contract. He'd make out that I was some sort of locum doctor and not actually one of his staff. He'd manage to wriggle out of any possible contamination somehow.' His mouth turned down petulantly. 'He's good at that.'

'If what you say is true, how often did Allward invite girls into the hospital at night?'

'Often enough. Who's to say that he didn't do it last Friday night? There are plenty of empty rooms at the moment with so many of the patients away. It would be an ideal time for him to get up to mischief, especially with Melville-Briggs absent for the night. What could be easier than for him to set up a little rendezvous and sneak away for half an hour during a meal break?'

'Like you, you mean?' Smythe scowled unhappily at the reminder. 'Do you know for a fact that Allward invited a girl here that night?' Rafferty persisted.

'No.' Smythe's reply was sullen. 'Why don't you ask him yourself?'

'I intend to, Doctor. After I've finished questioning you, that is.'

How on earth had Smythe's parents managed to convince themselves that he was doctor material? It was plain to him that the man wasn't suited to the job. The tragedy was he would probably have made a good vet.

Rafferty looked again at the photographs on the wall. His parents didn't look wealthy, but the pride of achievement shone from their faces; an achievement paid for by the hapless Smythe in years of degradation and humiliation, trapped in the wrong career. Realising he was again on the verge of feeling a misplaced sympathy, Rafferty sighed and invited Smythe to continue. 'You said you had gone up to the pub for a drink?'

Smythe nodded. 'I only meant to go out for half an hour or so, but I—I got chatting to a girl. She was so pretty. It's ridiculous, I know, that I should think...girls have never bothered much with me, but I began to hope...' He broke off and swallowed hard in evident distress. 'She was waiting for someone,' he resumed. 'It wasn't me.' He wiped his face with the sleeve of his white coat and then looked down at his hands again. 'That's why I—'

'Why you met up with Linda and killed her?' Hadn't hurt pride and frustration long been sufficient motives for some men to kill? he mused sadly.

'No! I told you—'

'You'd had a lot to drink—we know that, so you needn't trouble to deny it,' he added, as Smythe continued to shake his head. 'You persuaded her back here. Then, when she refused sex, you hit her.' He still couldn't understand why even a part-time prostitute would refuse sex, but presumably they, too, had their preferences. He didn't quite understand either why he should bludgeon her face to a bloody pulp, yet leave her body untouched. If Linda Wilks had been killed in a frenzy of frustrated anger, there would have been blows to her body as well, but there hadn't been. He had been struck at the time by the fact that the body had been unmarked. Struck by it and then promptly forgotten about it, until Dally had remarked on it. Now, the strangeness of it struck him afresh. It hinted that the girl had been killed by someone in control, coolly, deliberately. Not Smythe's type at all. Altogether, it posed too many unanswered questions for Rafferty's peace of mind.

'Why won't you listen?' Smythe spread out his hands as though beseeching for alms. 'I had an argument, I admit it, but not with the dead girl. It was another girl entirely; surely you learned that much at the pub? I wanted her to come back for a drink. It was quite safe; I knew Melville-Briggs would be out at a dinner all night. He does the same thing several times a year.'

'So while the cat was away you decided to play.'

'Why not?' he demanded truculently. 'I told you, I wouldn't be the only one. Melville-Briggs might think he owns me, body and soul, but he doesn't. I'm my own man.'

This defiant declaration was pathetic after what had gone before, but at least it seemed to give him some satisfaction, for now he calmed down a little. 'Anyway, she wouldn't come. She kept insisting that her friend would arrive soon, but when he didn't, she left. I left soon after. On my own.'

'Did she mention whether this friend was male or female?' Llewellyn asked.

Smythe shook his head sadly, as though at last accepting that his case was hopeless. 'I just assumed it was a man. Really pretty girls are always with a man or expecting one. They don't usually hang about waiting for a girlfriend. Only a plain girl would do that, and she'd latch onto an attractive, more popular girlfriend, hoping she'd fix her up with a man, too. Must be one of Mother Nature's more hit and miss methods of ensuring the continuation of the population, but it seems to work.'

It wasn't something that Rafferty had ever noticed, but Llewellyn was nodding his head sagely. Perhaps he'd made a study of the phenomenon in his psychology classes at university.

'She seemed nervous, strung up and wanted me to buy her another drink. I'd already bought her several and she'd obviously had a few before I arrived. I imagine I filled the waiting time for her.' His voice had a tinge of bitterness, of hurt pride that it was his destiny to be used as a convenient stop-gap till something better turned up. Rafferty could see how that would enrage a man, any man, but particularly a man of low self-esteem like Smythe. It was probably the last straw after a day filled with problems which he had found hard to cope with.

Smythe went on. 'But it was already late. I was starting to get worried that I'd be missed or that the police might come past and decide to find out why there were still so many vehicles in the car park—can you imagine Dr. Melville-Briggs's reaction if I was arrested in such circumstances?'

Rafferty could, and again, the unwanted sympathy came seeping slyly back. If he was unfortunate enough to be a man like Smythe, working for a bully like Melville-Briggs, he suspected he, too, might require liquid solace.

'She'd told me earlier that she had a Citroen in the car park. I was in time to see it roar off towards town.' He sniffed away a trickle of mucus. 'I was pretty fed up myself by then and I nearly went back to the pub. But I knew it was possible that Dr. Melville-Briggs might take it into his head to telephone and check up on me—he did that sometimes.' He glanced unhappily at the photo of the respectable couple on the wall. 'My parents would be terribly upset if I got the sack from here.' He sniffed again and went on. 'I'd bought a bottle of whisky from the landlord, so I decided to do what I'd originally intended and come back to the hospital for another drink.'

'What time was this?'

'About 11.30, perhaps a little later. I'm not sure.' He began to look less hunted, as though, like an animal, he sensed that Rafferty's determined pursuit of him was wavering. He had sufficient wit to make the most of it. 'It was dark. I hadn't had much to eat all day and I'd drunk more than usual. I fell over and broke my glasses just up the road from the pub.' A strained smile broke free from the tense set of his face. 'Amazingly, I didn't break the bottle.' The smile faded. 'After that, I was like a blind man stumbling along.'

'Your glasses weren't broken when I saw you,' Rafferty reminded him, frustrated himself now that his suspicions seemed to have led him to a dead end. They could have been broken in a struggle. But there'd been no trace of optical glass under or around the body and, according to Sam Dally, no struggle either.

Smythe's fingers touched the frames of his spectacles. 'These are a spare pair. With eyesight like mine, it's essential to have another pair for emergencies.' Rafferty nodded. It was plausible. Dropping his hand back in his lap, Smythe continued. 'Luckily, I saw the car before I got close enough to the hospital to be recognised and I pulled my collar up and—'

'What car?' Llewellyn put in sharply.

'Do you know the make? Did you see who was in it? Would you recognise them again?' demanded Rafferty.

Smythe jumped at the torrent of questions and selected one at random. 'I don't know. I never recognise makes, besides, I was too far away to see clearly. It had been parked close into the hospital wall, a little way from the side-gate. Almost as soon as I saw it, it began to reverse onto that piece of waste ground opposite the hospital and was driven off towards town. I kept my head down. The driver might have been someone from the hospital and I was scared I'd be recognised. All I wanted was to get back to my office before someone discovered I was missing.'

'You recognised the Citroen, though, didn't you?' Llewellyn put in quickly.

'Yes, but that was only because she'd told me what it was and she was the only person to have left the bar. Besides, the lights from the pub car park caught the name as she sped off.'

'But you'd broken your glasses,' Rafferty pointed out.

'That was after.'

He hadn't managed to shake him. But as he no longer thought Smythe was the murderer, he hadn't expected to. 'Do you remember the colour of this car at all?'

'It was a lightish shade and I remember there was only one person, in it, no passenger.’

'What happened next?'

'I had a bit of trouble with the lock on the gate. I unlocked it, or thought I did, but it wouldn't budge. I tried again and it opened.'

'Perhaps you'd forgotten to lock it when you came out?' Llewellyn suggested, glancing at Rafferty.

Smythe shook his head. 'I don't think so. I didn't forget to lock it behind me when I came back, even though I was far from sober. I hadn't gone more than a few paces into the grounds when I fell over again. Only this time it was a body I fell over. The feet were right across my path and tripped me up. I remember touching the toes as I scrambled up. I thought at first it was just a funny-shaped branch, but the moon came out just then and as I got up, I could see her face quite clearly. It had all been smashed most horribly.'

Rafferty had to strain to hear; Smythe's voice was now the merest whisper and his eyes stared straight ahead, as though he was reliving the moment, its horror clearly etched in his face. He shuddered and, taking a deep breath, tried to collect himself. 'She was still warm. She could only have died a short time before.'

'You're sure she was dead?'

The pathetic dignity returned as Smythe met Rafferty's eyes. 'I know you don't think me much of a doctor, Inspector, but I can still recognise a dead body when I fall over one. Believe me when I tell you she was quite, quite dead.'

And Rafferty could recognise the truth when he heard it. 'Go on,' he encouraged dispiritedly.

'Someone—her killer, I suppose, had removed all her clothes. Anyway, I couldn't see them anywhere.'

'What did you do next?'

'I left her there.' With obvious reluctance, he met Rafferty's eyes. 'I know it was a despicable thing to do, but I couldn't help her. She was already dead.' He lowered his gaze. 'I—I wasn't thinking clearly. I was drunk, distraught.'

'Oh, I would say you were thinking clearly enough, Doctor,' he remarked and watched, unsurprised as the dull red flush of shame stained Smythe's pale cheeks. But, even after listening to the ready excuses for the inexcusable, Rafferty could still feel sorry for him. It wasn't reasonable to expect more ethical conduct from someone so browbeaten as poor Smythe. Confronted by the problem of confessing his dereliction of duty, together with his proximity to a newly-dead body, it was no wonder he had put self-preservation first.

It was interesting about the car. They hadn't found any tracks, but then the weather had been very dry recently, unseasonably warm and muggy. There were no shops or houses just there to explain its presence. Only the hospital and the pub a good two hundred yards closer to the main road. There'd have been no reason for any of the customers to go that way, certainly not by car, as the road petered out into a dead end. Of course, it was always possible that one of the staff had been dropped off at the illicit side entrance. But he didn't think so. The night staff came on duty several hours earlier and how many other people could have been prowling around the hospital at that time of night? It was possibly a courting couple, but Smythe had mentioned only seeing one person in the car and however blurred his vision, he was unlikely to make a mistake about that. Once the car began to move away, two separate shapes would have become visible, not just one, even to a person with Smythe’s poor eyesight.

He'd get the house-to-house team on to it directly. He'd also have to put out an appeal for this other girl that the landlord and Gilbert had described, see if she came forward. And perhaps it was time he indulged himself with interviewing Melville-Briggs? Perhaps he could shed some light on who the other girl in the pub might be.

The fact that several points of Smythe's story checked out, made the story about the car more credible. Smythe wasn't streetwise enough to blend truth and falsehood in order to give a cohesive strength to his story. He was the type who would tell either the whole truth or a complete pack of lies. And he'd tried the lies. As they already knew some of his story was true, Rafferty was the more inclined to believe the rest was also.

If only he hadn't broken his damned glasses, he might have been able to tell them who had been in the car. It might well have been the murderer.

Smythe's head was still bent like a penitent as though he was awaiting Rafferty's absolution. His pink scalp showed through the thinning blonde hair. It looked soft, pleading, vulnerable.

Rafferty sighed. He believed Smythe's story, but he might as well tidy up the loose ends before he ploughed on with the investigation. 'What were you wearing that night?' he asked.

'What—?' Comprehension dawned. 'This suit.'

It was a plain, lightish blue with a rather distinctive stripe of darker blue. If, as he had said, he had fallen over the girl's feet, it would explain the lack of blood. If he had attacked the girl with the ferocity which her injuries suggested, the suit would surely have blood on it; a lot of blood. If he was telling the truth and this was the suit he had worn, of course. Perhaps Gilbert or the landlord would remember it?

'I'll have to ask you for the suit, Doctor and your shoes and the other clothes you were wearing that night.' He paused, and then demanded, 'I suppose you know you've committed an offence? Several offences.'

Smythe nodded miserably, then his watery eyes gazed pleadingly at Rafferty. 'I suppose it'll all have to come out? My career... I was hoping... You couldn't...?'

Rafferty stared at him incredulously. Even now, Smythe still clung to the pathetic remnants of his professional dignity. The realisation temporarily cured him of compassion and he observed bluntly. 'If I were you, Doctor, I'd be more concerned that someone in the pub remembers that you were wearing that suit, rather than another one that you could have since destroyed. Otherwise...' He let the awful warning hang in the air for a few seconds before he turned to Llewellyn. 'Take him home and let him get changed, then take him to the station for a signed statement and a session with the identikit man. See if he can come up with a face for the girl in the pub.'

Watching Llewellyn take Smythe away, Rafferty reflected that, as Alice had said, this case was getting curiouser and curiouser. Perhaps, as well as speaking to Dr. Melville-Briggs, they'd do well to see Senior Charge Nurse Allward again.