Chapter Seven-3
485 Words
ALTHOUGH THE A11 WAS fairly quiet, it was late afternoon by the time they got back to Melville-Briggs’s sanatorium and their dreary little office.
'Get hold of Dally,' Rafferty instructed the Welshman. 'Remind him that I'm still waiting for the results of the post-mortem. Anyone would think he had a conveyor-belt of corpses awaiting his attention.'
Of course, there was no answer from Sam Dally’s end. And as he listened to Llewellyn leave a message Rafferty checked down his lists. 'We'd better get on. We've only one or two more members of staff to go and three more patients. Right, let's have—' He paused, unable to read his own handwriting. 'Nurse White.'
'Nurse Wright, is, I think you'll find, the young lady's name, Sir,' Llewellyn supplied confidently, secure in the ivory tower of his own perfect script.
'Whatever,' Rafferty mumbled. 'Let's have her in.'
Nearly three quarters of an hour later, Rafferty knew he was in no danger of ever forgetting the wretched woman's name. He felt like cursing it and her from Llewellyn's ivory tower.
Nurse Wright mightn't have been sufficiently academic to have studied for the higher, RMN qualification, Rafferty reflected, but she was smart enough to know on which side her bread was buttered. It had taken him all that time to drag her story out of her and, even then, it came reluctantly. Disgruntled, he wondered if she was hoping for promotion to Melville-Briggs's bed.
Nurse Wright told them a young woman had handed her a note for Melville-Briggs just as she had arrived at the side gate for duty on the night of the murder. Of course, she hadn't thought to give it to them when Linda Wilks's body had been found the next morning. She'd actually thrown it away. Or so she said.
She also claimed this young woman had told her she would wait till 11.30 p.m. for Melville-Briggs to contact her on her mobile. But as Nurse Wright claimed it was only when she got no answer to her knock on the door of Melville-Briggs’s hospital flat that night that she realised he was elsewhere, so had thrown the note away.
Of course, the note had vanished. Rafferty wondered if she'd handed it to Melville-Briggs at the first opportunity and hadn't thrown it in the waste-basket at all. He cursed as he thought of the hours likely to be wasted raking through dustbins. He'd had to take men off the other search teams to look for it. Remembering Nurse Wright's tight white uniform and the fashionably tousled blonde curls under the saucily-positioned cap, he hoped Melville-Briggs would be grateful for her attempted discretion.
They'd almost certainly lost the element of surprise in questioning Melville-Briggs about the matter. He'd be expecting them to demand an explanation. Well, Rafferty determined, he wasn't going to—at least not yet. Apart from his Boy Scout motto, Rafferty had another one: never do what people expect you to do. It left them unbalanced which was just what he wanted. He'd see Gentleman Jim when he gauged vertigo was ready to tip the doctor over into some useful disclosures, and not before.
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