*
The senior consultant of the emergency department had the beginnings of a black eye and an obvious bump on her forehead, but it didn’t hamper her as she hurled fresh bales of hay into a row of stables. Her husband had pointed Greg in the direction of the yard and told him the stables were to the left. He promised to bring out tea shortly, leaving Greg to find Dr Cowan by himself.
The doctor was well muscled, dressed in a checked shirt and jeans tucked into wellingtons. He couldn’t imagine her dealing with intricate situations, having to use fine motor skills to suture or cut into flesh. She looked like a farmer’s wife, very at home with a pitchfork.
She was not surprised by his visit and said that after she finished in the stables she had planned on going to the hospital to talk to her staff. Some of them might need counselling. She had already rung Fiona Woods’s parents and offered her condolences and she had spoken to the chief executive several times since the morning. Her cheeks were puffy and Greg wondered if the cause was her recent injury or from crying. Her eyes had welled up at the mention of Fiona Woods.
‘I just can’t believe she’s dead,’ she now said, stopping work and leaning on the pitchfork. ‘I can’t believe I’m never going to see her again.’ She rubbed her eyes with the back of hand.
‘And when was the last time you saw her?’ Greg asked.
‘Yesterday,’ she sighed heavily. ‘It seems a lifetime ago.’
‘Did she say anything to you about anything troubling her?’
‘Only about Alex. That’s all we seemed to talk about lately. How worried we were about her. Her! And now poor Fiona is dead!’ She closed her eyes and shook her head in despair. ‘I blame myself! I should have forced Alex to take leave when I first felt she was having a breakdown. This is my fault – mine entirely. She’s been screaming out for help for a long time now and I should have done something about it. She’s been drinking. I suspect she’s been taking other substances. I should have done it yesterday, after this.’ She pointed at the bump on her head. ‘Alex attended me and after checking me over she asked me if I thought my car accident was connected to her.’ She sighed heavily. ‘As you’re probably aware, the driver who drove into the back of me has owned up. I should have put her on sick leave immediately. I’ve got a young woman’s death on my conscience now because I didn’t deal with it when I should have.’
Greg was shocked by how ready she was to condemn Alex Taylor. Everything she said was damning.
‘You seem positive that it’s Alex who killed Fiona Woods. I thought they were best friends?’
‘They were,’ she said. ‘But who else could have done this? Alex has been falling apart for weeks. I’ve had colleagues ring me up with their concerns, which I should have listened to more carefully. I had to get another doctor to shadow her in case she made any more errors. You’ll probably – if you haven’t already – hear about it, but she nearly gave a drug to a man that would have killed him.’
‘Would it be an easy mistake to make?’
She shook her head. ‘Most definitely not. She’d been drinking; that’s the only reason, and Fiona Woods was trying to cover it up.’
Greg’s heart picked up speed at this information. He hadn’t known that Fiona Woods was a witness to the drug error. She may have been covering for Alex because it wasn’t an error, but a deliberate mistake.
He shook his head hard, trying to dislodge the uncomfortable thought. He felt treacherous for thinking it.
‘Fiona Woods was meant to have met with one of my officers yesterday evening. She didn’t show up for that meeting. The officer believes she was going to give her information about something that happened to Dr Taylor last year.’
‘She was attacked,’ Caroline Cowan blurted out.
Again he felt shock. ‘By whom?’
‘An actor we had in the department. He was playing the role of doctor in a TV drama and was shadowing Alex.’
‘And she reported this to the police?’
‘No. We tried to get her to, but she wouldn’t.’ Caroline Cowan raised a hand and gingerly touched the bump on her forehead. She seemed weary and sad at the same time. ‘The thing is,’ she said in a subdued and careful tone, ‘I never really pushed her that hard to report it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I couldn’t be sure it happened. She was tearful and very uncomfortable talking about it and there was no evidence.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘I couldn’t be sure. You see, after she reported him to me, he telephoned me and said that he understood my ringing his agent requesting he no longer come to the department, but it was a shame I didn’t speak with him first. He told me he had been planning to come and see me. He was concerned that Alex was becoming a little attached to him. Making excuses to see him. He thought her a very nice woman, and was grateful for the help she gave him, but he felt a little uncomfortable because he had to rebuff her.’
Greg felt the interview was coming to an end and stood silently for a moment. In the longest time since he could remember, he was faced with a situation where he wanted to be wrong. He wanted Alex Taylor to be innocent. And now after what this woman just said he was beginning to feel angry that no one had made her feel supported. He was overcome with the thought that he couldn’t save her and he shivered as the first real doubts crept into his mind. She could be guilty. She could be a cold-blooded killer.
‘Forgive me for saying so,’ he said harshly, ‘but I think it was your duty to report that incident. Whether you believed it or not is irrelevant. You have a duty of care to your staff first and foremost, and you should have rung the police yourself.’ He turned away angrily and breathed heavily for a moment. She had tears in her eyes when he faced her again. ‘How do you know it didn’t set this whole thing off? How do you know she wasn’t attacked and that this is now the price she’s paying – having a major breakdown and destroying not only her life, but others’ lives as well. How do you know he hasn’t done this before? That he hasn’t attacked another woman since then? I want his name, because I most definitely will be paying him a visit.’
‘His name is Oliver Ryan,’ she said in a drained voice.
The name meant nothing to him.
‘Is he famous? A movie star? Television, Hollywood or what?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He’s one of those actors you would immediately recognise but can’t remember what he’s been in, and you don’t know their name. He’s been in lots of things .?.?. He was the diver, the main character in Black Waters, the one about Loch Ness, who goes down in a sub and discovers a woman’s body and tries to prove the history of the Loch Ness monster was an invention to cover up a murder that took place in the 1930s.’ She paused and then said, ‘It wasn’t that good, really.’