Chapter twenty
Heavy rain pelted the windowpanes in the CID suite and thick cloud darkened the sky. The lights were on in the department, even though it was only ten o’clock in the morning. The sound of the rain and the darkness outside made the office feel oppressive, and the noise of the tapping of keyboards, ringing of mobiles and a dozen different voices were giving Greg a headache. Laura Best was back on day shift and her mere presence, even though she had yet to say or do anything annoying, irritated him.
She was minding her own business and had been at her desk for an hour, working. At what, though? he wondered.
He looked over her shoulder at her computer screen. ‘What are you looking at this stuff for?’ he asked.
She turned her head and stared at him. ‘I want you to read this, and then I want to talk to you about something. It’s a thought I’ve been having over the last few days.’
‘And what about the stuff you’re meant to be doing? Checking with Lillian Armstrong’s friends about punters that are more dubious than most. Checking to see if they know any of her regulars. We need her mobile contacts, if she has a Facebook page, or Twitter. We know nothing about what she was doing in the hours that led up to her death, or what she was doing in that car park in the first place. These are the things you should be working on, Laura, not looking up some illness. Get with the programme, why don’t you?’
She smiled, unfazed by his annoyance with her. ‘Take a chill pill, why don’t you?’ she retaliated. ‘This stuff I’m looking at might be the answer to your prayers. I’ve been doing a little checking on Dr Taylor and she’s not as pure as she makes out.
‘I’ve talked to some of the staff in A & E and rumour has it she made some almighty cock-up a couple of weeks back and it’s been covered up. The nurse I spoke to reckons she was going to administer the wrong drug – she made some hoo-ha about someone mixing them up. Apparently it would have killed the man if he had been given it.
‘And another piece of information I gathered from one of her close friends – Fiona Woods. She said something that got me thinking. She said something along the lines of “it shouldn’t have happened to her again”. I tried to get her to talk, let her think I was being sympathetic.’
Greg raised an eyebrow at this. He had seen Laura Best’s sympathy in action. He had been on the receiving end.
‘And then she said, “I don’t mean literally happen again. It’s just, I thought she’d moved on.” Now what could she have meant by that, I wonder?’
He could almost see her licking the cream from her lips as she smiled smugly. ‘So I’m going to do a little more digging on our Dr Taylor.’
‘And in the meantime, why have you got this stuff up on your screen, about Munchausen syndrome, of all things?’ he answered, no less curtly. He shouldn’t feel protective towards Alex Taylor, but he did. He felt bound to protect her. Laura Best was gunning for the doctor and he had seen her annihilate people before, whether they were innocent or guilty. It didn’t matter to her as long as she got a result.
‘Well, let me read it to you, Greg, and then you might not be so snotty.’
Greg nudged aside Laura’s office chair and lent closer to the monitor screen. ‘No, let’s not. I’ll read it myself.’ Greg quickly scanned the document, which stated that Munchausen syndrome was a psychological disorder, where someone pretends to be ill or deliberately produces symptoms of illness in themselves.
Greg stared at her in disbelief. This was way below the belt, even for her. ‘Are you seriously suggesting Dr Taylor has Munchausen’s syndrome?’
‘I saved the best for last, Greg,’ she said, wearing another smug smile. She clicked the mouse and a new document appeared on the screen. ‘Munchausen by proxy makes for a far more interesting read. I—’
‘That’s where the mother makes the child sick,’ he interrupted coldly and sarcastically. ‘You’re barking up the wrong illness.’
She sighed as if trying to keep calm with a naughty child. ‘Patience, Greg, and all will be revealed. This isn’t just about mothers who make their children sick. It’s about people in caring roles: nurses, doctors, medical professionals who deliberately make their patients sick with the sole purpose to then save them so that they can be praised and revered. It’s also referred to as “playing God”.’
Greg felt a rush of coldness. He didn’t like the fact that Laura had dug this up. But there was stuff here that could apply .?.?.
‘This is bollocks,’ he snapped. ‘And you’ll be up on a charge for defamation of character if you’re not careful.’
‘Is it? I don’t think so, Greg.’
‘It was Alex Taylor who told us about the tyre mark on Lillian Armstrong’s jacket. You think she’d do that if she’s just run over the woman? Use her car and then point us in the direction of the weapon?’
‘Who said anything about her using her car? She could have used someone else’s, for all we know. Don’t you think it’s a little interesting that she keeps popping up? She’s abducted, attacked. Then her patient, Amy Abbott, is murdered, according to her. Then a message is left on her car. Next she makes a serious drug error where someone nearly dies. And to top it all, now she’s first on the scene at a hit and run. It would tie in nicely to her theory of a mad doctor being on the loose. For someone who is supposed to be innocent, there’s a lot of stuff going on around her. But, if she has got some mental illness like I think she has, this would then all make sense. You could even expect bodies to start mounting up.’
She swung the chair round and stood up. ‘I intend to investigate her and then we’ll find out if I’m right or wrong. Oh, and for the record,’ she said in a tone that bordered on insolence, ‘Lillian Armstrong had a Facebook account, full of drivel: what the kids had for dinner, what the kids did at school, what the kids were doing tomorrow. Nothing whatsoever about what she did for a living. Her phone records are presently being checked and her ex, or rather the father of her children, has an alibi for the time of her death. He’s a taxi driver in Southampton and is logged as working that day.’
Greg stared at the screen long after she’d gone. He felt as if a savage dog had just been unleashed, snapping and snarling and baying for blood, and he couldn’t stop it. Neither could he warn Dr Taylor that it was coming her way.
Chapter twenty-one
Nathan broke off a piece of Galaxy and handed it to her. He had taken to sharing his junk food with her as a matter of habit, and Alex had stopped thanking him after the first half a dozen times, as it was becoming annoying to them both.