The tall and newly trained officer reddened. ‘Sorry, sir. I was checking on DC Best’s whereabouts.’
Greg stared at him with new interest. Had Laura found herself a new playmate, he wondered. He hoped so. He really did. He wanted Laura Best off his back before this year ended.
‘And why would you be doing that?’
‘Concern, sir. She hasn’t shown up.’
‘I meant,’ Greg said more concisely. ‘Why you? Why would you take it on yourself to check out her whereabouts?’
‘Because I’ve .?.?. I’ve been seeing her lately.’
Greg smiled. ‘Seeing, as in .?.?. romantically seeing?’
Morgan nodded.
‘And have you heard from her today?’
‘No, sir. She had a meeting yesterday evening with someone. She texted me yesterday to cancel our date and I haven’t heard from her since.’
‘Were you expecting to hear from her again?’
Another nod. ‘After her meeting I thought she might ring me.’
The door to the briefing room opened and Stella Cartwright, a senior civilian support officer, entered the room. ‘Sorry to barge in, Greg. We just had a 999 from the hospital. They’ve got a dead body up there and this one didn’t die in a bed.’
Dennis Morgan let out a gasp and Greg quickly looked at him.
‘What is it, Dennis?’
His handsome face had turned pale and his eyes gone wide.
‘Laura’s meeting was at the hospital. That’s where she went.’
*
Laura was not in the best of moods. She was late for work, which was a cardinal sin for her. She had dropped her mobile in the bath this morning and the person she had been meeting had stood her up the night before. Touché, maybe. But enough was enough. So far she had wasted an entire evening and part of her morning.
She was standing in the emergency department trying to speak to the coordinator and get an explanation without a telephone constantly interrupting them, and had so far gleaned that her no-show of last night had no-showed for work as well.
She now needed her mobile number again, as she was unable to access it from her own phone, so that she could get in contact and set up another meeting fast.
As the charge nurse ended yet another call, Laura tried again to speak to him.
His smile was rueful. ‘Sorry, it’s always like this in the mornings. Just give me a sec and I’ll get you the number.’ He pulled a red folder towards him and then raised his eyebrows in resignation and sighed loudly as his bleeper went off. He dialled a number on his phone and Laura saw his instant shock as he spoke to the caller. She was about to turn away when she heard him mention the police being called. His face was white when he came off the phone, and she had to ask him twice what the problem was.
His eyes were glazed and blinking fast. ‘Theatre. It’s up in main theatre. You need to get up there,’ he managed to say.
Hurrying through the corridors, she passed others rushing towards the theatres, and when she got to the doors she was barred until she pulled out her ID and informed the orderly that she was a police officer.
Doctors and nurses were gathered in the long corridor, all wearing scrubs and clearly shocked by what had happened, and one woman, an Asian of tiny stature, was crying hysterically.
On the floor outside an open door was a pool of vomit, and Laura began to realise that something very serious had happened.
A man in blue scrubs was comforting the Asian woman, and beside them a second woman, the only person who looked to be remotely in control, was standing quietly by.
Laura approached her. ‘My name’s Laura Best. I’m with CID. Can you tell me what’s going on?’
The woman went to shake hands and then, realising that she was wearing a surgical glove, she let it drop to her side. ‘Sandy Bailey. I’m senior theatre sister. We have a very bad situation here. One of the staff nurses has found a body.’
‘In that room?’ she asked, pointing to the open door by the pool of vomit.
The theatre sister nodded. ‘Yes. It’s where we send our instruments for sterilisation and collect our new sets. She got a terrible shock when she went in there.’
Aware that she was probably entering a crime scene, Laura told the woman to allow no one to leave the department or let anyone enter unless they were the police. She asked if she could have a pair of plastic shoe covers.
The sister shook her head. ‘We don’t use them anymore. We all wear clogs now.’
‘Please don’t let anyone in here,’ she warned the sister.
Slipping off her jacket she placed it on the floor with her handbag, far enough away from the vomit, against the corridor wall.
Her first thought was that the room was small and that it didn’t look like a sterilisation area. Her second thought was that there was no body on the floor. Turning impatiently to the sister she saw on the left-hand side of the room an opening in the wall. A woman was curled inside it, her knees and thighs showing, drawn tightly up against her chest. Her right forearm was squashed in across her lap and her long dark hair was hanging loose, hiding her face.
Using a pen from her shirt pocket, Laura lifted the hair up and saw the reason she had been stood up.
Fiona Woods hadn’t been able to make it because she was dead.
Chapter thirty-eight
Maggie’s face showed pleasure and curiosity as she let her very happy and flushed visitor into the house. Alex was glowing and her energy was high, making it almost impossible for her to stand still and speak slowly. She thanked her friend for letting her in, thanked her for the beautiful painting and enthused about the beautiful day.
Maggie’s eyebrows rose at this, as it was blowing a gale and chucking down rain outside. She eventually managed to squeeze a word in edgeways to ask the cause of this happy change in her new friend.
Alex flushed a deeper red and her eyes brimmed with happy tears. ‘Nathan. He came to see me last night.’
‘Nathan Bell from A & E?’
‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘And he’s absolutely wonderful.’
‘I gather he stayed,’ Maggie said drily.
Alex’s face scrunched up guiltily, but her lips twitched gleefully.
‘Well,’ Maggie said, leading the way into her beautiful sitting room. ‘He’s certainly a fast worker.’
‘But he’s not,’ Alex replied in his defence. ‘He’s shy and reserved and amazed that any woman could ever want him. He’s beautiful, Maggie, and he doesn’t know it.’
‘If it wasn’t so early in the day I would say this is a cause for celebration, but,’ and she sighed here, ‘you and I have got something else to do. That’s if you still want to.’