CHAPTER NINE
Charge Nurse Allward was a cool customer all right, Rafferty decided. He sat cross-legged and perfectly at his ease in their cramped little office, his glossy looks managing to make the room look even shabbier than normal.
'What made you decide to become a nurse, Mr Allward?' Rafferty asked suddenly, as Allward settled, hoping to ruffle his smooth feathers by an unexpected beginning to the interview. 'It's hardly the automatic career to appeal to a man like yourself, I would have thought.'
Allward smiled. 'You overestimate my talents, Inspector. But, to answer your question; nursing's as good a career as any and even with Health Service cuts, it seemed a reasonably secure profession to enter. Why do you ask?'
'Just curious.' In fact, he was damned curious. Allward struck him as a type who would be more at home in a city office wielding a computer and three phones than a bedpan in a psychiatric hospital, even if it was a private one. Did he hope for a mention in a few of the older patients' wills? He was the type to appeal to old ladies.
'You're on permanent night duty here, aren't you?' A hint of wariness entered Allward's eyes as he nodded. 'Is there any particular reason for that?'
Allward raised his elegant shoulders. 'I see less of Dr. Melville-Briggs that way.'
Rafferty shot another dart at him in an attempt to shake his composure. 'It wasn't the opportunity for illicit rompo that appealed to you, then?' To his annoyance, Allward merely laughed, with what appeared to be genuine amusement.
'Have you been listening to gossip, Inspector?' he enquired dryly, seemingly not at all shaken by Rafferty's tactics.
'I listen to anything, Sir,' Rafferty replied tightly. 'If it's relevant to the case.'
'I wonder if I can guess who's been telling tales.' Allward's gaze rested thoughtfully on Rafferty. 'Simon Smythe looked even more hangdog than usual when I saw him earlier. And he had a policeman in tow.’ His voice softened, became more intense. ‘Been in here had he? Did a bit of snitching?'
Rafferty said nothing and Allward continued. 'The rest of the staff has got Smythe jailed already. Especially Melville-Briggs. He looked positively smug when he heard Smythe had been carted off to the police station. I expect he'll be in to congratulate you when he gets back from his conference, though I suspect his gratification is a little premature. If you thought you'd got your man, you'd hardly be questioning me again, would you?
‘I suppose Smythe couldn't wait to tell you all about my nocturnal activities? But I'm only following the boss's example, Inspector. Old Melville-do as I say and not as I do-Briggs. Still,' he mused, as though determined to demonstrate his lack of concern. 'I can hardly blame Simple Simon for not covering up for me.' He gave Rafferty another smile, but this time the charm failed to conceal his spite. 'Especially as he would appear to be a few answers short of an alibi himself.'
Rafferty ignored this. 'And what about your alibi, Mr Allward? Aren't you a few answers short as well?' He consulted his notes. 'According to your last statement, you were fifteen minutes late back from your early tea-break.'
'I've already explained about that.'
'So you have. What a shame no-one but a senile old man can vouch for you.'
Allward's eyes narrowed, but, outwardly at least, he retained his composure. 'Even if I had been with a girl, it's hardly a crime, Inspector.'
Rafferty wanted to see Allward's assurance crumble, that way he might get some more interesting answers. 'No,' he remarked slowly, 'but murder is.'
'Are you accusing me, Inspector?' Allward quirked an enquiring eyebrow. 'Should I have my solicitor present? You instigated this interview because you've discovered that I like a little diversion during the long nights. So what if I do? It doesn't make me a murderer.'
'No. But it does make you that much more interesting to suspicious policemen. I want to hear your statement again.'
Allward heaved a long-suffering sigh and repeated what he had already told them on the occasion of their previous interview. He'd had his tea-break at 11.15 p.m. and had returned at 11.45 pm, having been delayed by a patient for a quarter of an hour. 'I've told you all this before, Inspector,' Allward sounded wearied by the repetition. 'I was tending to one of the patients, as I said, not having fun and games with a local working girl.'
'So you said. Old Mr Tompkinson, wasn't it?' The patient with the convenient memory. Whose room was also handily situated near the back entrance to the bedroom block, to which Allward would have a key. He could easily have slipped out. How convenient that it had been Mr Tompkinson whom he claimed to have been tending. They'd already discovered that the old man was very suggestible. Had Allward told the patient that he'd woken from a bad dream on Friday night as a cover, sure that the patient would be too fuddled to contradict him?
'I believe you said he was a particular favourite of yours?'
'What of it?' Allward replied smartly. 'I didn't realise the time of death had been pinned down to one of my breaks.'
'All the staff are being asked to account for their movements, Sir,' Llewellyn remarked politely.
'Where do you take these breaks?' Rafferty questioned. 'In the staff lounge?'
'Sometimes,' came the guarded reply.
'And on Friday night—were you in the staff lounge then?'
'No.' A defensive tone had entered Allward's voice. Rafferty was pleased that he had at last managed to rattle the man. 'I put my feet up in one of the empty rooms in the male bedroom block. I was tired and wanted a short nap.'
Llewellyn raised his eyebrows at this. 'Surely that's against the hospital's rules?'
Allward gave a cynical laugh. 'You'd be surprised what goes on in hospitals at night, Sergeant; drinks parties, gambling clubs, a fair amount of naughties. Don't tell me it's not the same at cop-shops? It's difficult to believe that the "boys in blue" don't get a kick out of watching confiscated porno movies. I thought it was how you earned the nickname.'
'We're not here to discuss what the police have to do to prove an offence has been committed, Sir,' Llewellyn replied stiffly. 'I believe we were discussing what you were doing?'
'I've already told you. I was in one of the spare bedrooms.'
'Alone?'
'Unfortunately, yes.'
'Yet, surely with Melville-Briggs safely out of the way, you had an ideal opportunity?' Rafferty suggested. 'What stopped you from providing yourself with a little entertainment?'
Allward's eyes met Rafferty's boldly. 'I just didn't feel like it, that's all. We can't all be super-studs like the old man, you know. Of course, the rest of us don't have our virility stimulated by the thought of profit in the way that he does. I should imagine it's a great aphrodisiac.'
'The dead girl was a prostitute. A psychiatric hospital at night is not the obvious choice for a pleasant stroll. Not the likeliest place to pick up a john. Presumably she was expecting to see someone on Friday night. Have you any idea who?'
'No.' Allward was beginning to sound a little sullen, as though he was no longer finding the interview quite so amusing.
'Perhaps she was part of a midnight sewing bee?' Rafferty suggested sardonically. Allward said nothing and reluctantly, Rafferty let him go, but remarked to Llewellyn when he had gone. 'I think we've found the "medical man" Linda's father mentioned telephoned.' He snorted. 'Probably told Linda he was a doctor.’ He scowled as he recalled another task he had yet to organise. ‘Remind me I need to get the Wilks’s family’s phone records checked. Maybe we can get a handle on this “medical man”.’
Llewellyn nodded and jotted a few words in his notebook.
‘Some of the other staff must be aware of what Allward gets up to at night, Staff Nurse Estoce, for instance. I think, with a little encouragement, she might forget that touching loyalty for long enough to drop him in it.'
Llewellyn looked doubtful. 'He's good-looking, confident, hardly the type to turn to a prostitute. And he's not the sort to lose his head—Smythe yes, but not him.'
'He might have been betwee
n girlfriends. Perhaps he rang Linda to fill a temporary gap. She said herself that the medical type who rang her was one of her men friends—a regular? And even if he hadn't used her services before, it seems likely he'd have heard of her.'
'But what if there wasn't a phone call at all?' Llewellyn threw in. 'Sidney Wilks isn't completely above suspicion himself, remember? He could have invented that phone call to avert suspicion from himself. Of the two, I favour him.'
Rafferty shook his head. 'Even if Wilks did lie, it doesn't alter the fact that she must have known someone at the hospital to have come here in the first place. Otherwise why come? I want Allward's clothes checked by forensic, just like Smythe's,' he added decisively. 'He's too clever to refuse and of course, if he did it, he'll have got rid of the ones he was wearing by now, but it'll rattle him and that's what I want.'