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Fox laughed, remembering again the photo of Jack Smith, naked and startled. ‘Well, the good doctor has certainly got motive. But maybe we’re missing the obvious suspect. A druggie desperate for a fix, who saw her with her fancy bag, followed her into the car park, and stabbed her when she refused to hand it over.’
Holden said nothing. She was remembering the driving rain that night, and imagining Maria Tull walking as fast as her heels would allow down the St Clement’s pavement, maybe even breaking into a trot as she hurried to reach the shelter of her car. She would have turned right, in
to the alleyway, then across the car park towards her car, parked in the far right corner. Had the killer been waiting for her, someone who knew her and knew her movements that night, and knew that sooner or later she would return to her car? Or had some random addict seen her in the street and followed, or been hanging around in the car park and decided she looked good for cash. If only the CCTV had been working, they might have got some hard evidence to go on. As it was, they had only hunches. She shrugged – temporarily resigned to the impossibility of knowing – took another lick of her ice cream, and glanced across at her companion. ‘You really should take a chance one day, Sergeant, and try one of these. You might find you actually like it.’
When you’re lying on your back, your mouth jammed wide open and your upper lip and left-hand cheek stuffed tight with cotton wool, it is hard to engage in any sort of conversation, let alone a meaningful one. That fact, however, did not deter Geraldine Payne, BDS, as she leant over her first patient of that afternoon, Dr Karen Pointer. The conversation, in reality more of a monologue, had begun with the hectoring tones which many a patient of the good dentist would have recognized.
‘Now what did you have for lunch, Karen? A sandwich, I can see. Beef maybe?’ It hadn’t been beef, it had been roasted vegetables and humus, consumed messily in the car as she drove to her appointment, but that wasn’t the point. And in any case, no answer was expected or required. But the dentist had located detritus that the pathologist’s perfunctory brushing of her teeth had failed to dislodge, and the matter could not be allowed to go past without comment. The dentist followed up a few seconds later with a well-practised click of the tongue. ‘Really, Karen! What are we going to do with you? At this rate, by the time you hit fifty, I’ll be measuring you for dentures.’
The pathologist still made no comment, though she did wince with pain as the dentist reinforced her point by digging deeper with her instrument of torture. ‘Don’t you ever floss your teeth, Karen?’ she asked in a tone which combined professional disapproval and personal disgust. Karen Pointer said nothing, in fact could say nothing in her current situation. Instead she focused her eyes beyond the dentist’s face, on a children’s mobile of prehistoric dinosaurs, and willed the session to be over.
‘All right, you can have a spit now.’
Pointer pushed herself up, leant over the white bowl immediately to her left, and expelled the debris that had accumulated in her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said feebly, ‘I must be your worst patient.’
Geraldine laughed, not entirely unkindly. ‘It’s people like you that keep me in business, Karen.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ Karen replied, lying submissively back into her chair.
Geraldine leant over her again, and peered intently at her handiwork. ‘Anyway,’ she said, as she began a far from gentle flossing operation, ‘you must tell me about you. About your love life. Because I’ve been hearing some rumours, and I was wondering if there could possibly be a shred of truth in any of them.’
Karen said nothing. Geraldine and her were more than dentist and patient. They had known each other several years, largely as a result of their sexual orientation. They had not been lovers, but they moved in overlapping circles, shared friends, and bumped into each other from time to time. Karen wondered what exactly it was that Geraldine had heard. She couldn’t know about Susan and her, surely? Susan would hardly have started talking about it openly. They had admittedly been for a walk along the river the night before, but that was hardly compromising. More likely Geraldine had heard rumours, and she was just digging, saying something outrageous to see what response it provoked. That was just the sort of thing she would do.
When the flossing was over, Geraldine straightened up, but remained standing over her captive audience. ‘Well, spill the beans. It’s the least you can do!’
‘I wasn’t aware there were any beans to spill.’
‘Oh come, come! Alittle bird told me you were in Chilswell Road the other night.’
‘Really?’ She tried to sound genuinely surprised.
‘How is Inspector Susan?’
‘Thank you for doing my teeth,’ Karen replied.
Geraldine gave a grunt, apparently abandoning her inquisition, and pressed a lever which caused the chair to return her patient to a sitting position. Karen stood up, glad that that line of conversation had ended.
‘I met her myself this morning. Went to the police station, in fact, and gave her the benefit of my opinion. I expect she’ll want to tell you all about it tonight.’
‘We try not to talk shop,’ Karen said defensively, and then immediately regretted it.
‘We!’ She laughed. ‘So my little bird was right.’
‘It’s early days,’ Karen replied quickly.
‘Well, tell her to hurry up and find my bloody painting, won’t you, dear. Otherwise the two of you might be dropping off my Christmas card list.’
Karen smiled despite her best intentions. There was something about Geraldine that it was hard not to like, a sharpness of tongue and determination to get what she wanted that she almost admired. Mind you, she didn’t recall ever having received a Christmas card from Geraldine, but that thought didn’t make her feel any better at all. The fact was Geraldine wasn’t someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of.
There was a knock on the door, but the person responsible for it had no intention of waiting for a reply. ‘Hi!’ a voice said.
Sarah Russell looked up from her laptop. She was reviewing the budgeted figures against the actuals for the term so far, and the last thing she wanted was to be interrupted. ‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw who it was. But there was not even the tiniest crumb of welcome in her voice. ‘I’m busy.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
She looked down again, maintaining the pretence of being preoccupied with more important and interesting things. ‘What is it you want?’ She spoke with an irritation and sharpness that her colleagues and friends would have recognized as being absolutely normal, but buried somewhere within the layers of her voice was a frisson of anxiety that was by no means typical.
Her visitor looked at her with a smile. ‘I need some more money.’
