‘Amongst other therapies. All of this information is available on our website. Now, if that’s all—’
Other therapies. And Kate had been selling supplements to help couples with their fertility.
‘Do you know of a woman named Kate Emery? Did you ever work with her?’
There was a tiny intake of breath. ‘Hold on. Give me your number and I’ll call you back.’
She hung up before I could ask anything else.
‘What did she say?’ Georgia’s eyes were bright with interest.
‘She’s calling me back.’ I stood up and paced around the room, too excited to sit still. ‘I wish she’d hurry up.’
After a couple of minutes my phone rang: an unknown number.
‘You were asking about Kate Emery.’ No preamble, and this time Anita’s voice was distinctly more down-to-earth. I could hear traffic; she’d obviously left the building to talk to me. ‘I saw in the paper she’d disappeared. Murder, you said.’
‘It is a murder investigation, yes.’
‘God, poor Kate.’
‘You knew her.’
‘She used to work at the clinic. She was a nurse there, donkey’s years ago. Oh, it must be fifteen years ago. More. She quit when she found out her daughter wasn’t well. Such a shame. She was a brilliant nurse.’
‘Had you heard from her since?’
‘A few times. It was hard for her to go out, you know, with her daughter.’ A sigh. ‘She was great fun, Kate. Trouble with a capital T. Always up to something. She’d do anything for a laugh. Play jokes on people. Say anything. Bold as brass, that’s what I used to say to her.’
‘What about boyfriends?’
‘What about them?’
‘Did she take risks with boyfriends? Sleep with people she didn’t know?’
‘I couldn’t say. Is that what you’ve found out?’ Avid curiosity.
‘It’s one line of enquiry,’ I said. ‘Did you know about her business?’
‘Oh yes. I knew all about it. That’s why I couldn’t talk to you in the office. Kate came back to do a bit of work here a couple of years ago. Not nursing – reception work. I was off sick to recover from an operation and she covered for me. I was all right about it because I knew she wouldn’t want to take my job, and she didn’t. But she took something else. Our mailing list.’
‘Without asking?’
‘She didn’t ask because she knew the answer would have been no. Then she started sending people letters about their fertility issues, selling her stuff. We had complaints from clients straight away. We had to send out letters of apology and our lawyer sent Kate a warning not to use the list any more. Management were furious. But I always thought it was her way of getting back at them for firing her.’
‘They fired her before the theft of the mailing list came to light?’
‘She was supposed to do six weeks here but she got fired halfway through the second week. She got caught going through the files. They’re strictly confidential.’
‘Which files?’
‘Old ones from when she worked there. I don’t know, maybe she was curious about patients she’d treated. But the requests got flagged up by the archive system. It’s not like going through a filing cabinet. They’re all computerised, you see.’
‘What records were they, do you remember?’
‘I can find out for you.’ A pause while a lorry thundered past. ‘Do you think it’s relevant to what happened?’
‘No idea,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But I’d like to know.’
‘What did she say?’ Georgia asked as soon as I got off the phone.
‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead but Kate was downright unscrupulous about developing her business.’ I told her about the mailing list.
‘It’s not a motive for killing her though, is it?’ Georgia sounded disappointed.
‘Probably not. You can’t have everything.’
Georgia returned to the paperwork, speed-reading efficiently, commenting now and then on anything that struck her as unusual. Her comments were perceptive, I thought; she was good at this, even if she didn’t have the right instincts on the street. Strengths and weaknesses. We all had them. The trick was to work with people who were strong where you were weak. Maybe that was why Derwent was so keen that I shouldn’t become just like him. He needed me to be his conscience since he was entirely without one.
I was looking at a lab report when my phone rang again: Anita. It was a short conversation. I sat for a minute after I hung up, thinking. Then I went looking for Liv.
‘This lab report.’ I showed it to her.
‘What about it?’
‘What are they talking about?’
‘The needle.’
‘What needle?’
‘You should know. You collected it.’
I frowned at her. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘It came with all the rest of the stuff you collected from Kate Emery’s house. I think it was from the bin in her bedroom.’
‘I collected that,’ Derwent said, coming over to tweak the report out of my hand. ‘There was nothing in it. Cotton wool, used tissues.’
‘And a button and a needle.’ I shook my head. ‘I saw the button and I assumed it was a sewing needle, but it wasn’t. It was a medical one.’
‘I thought you knew that,’ Liv said, her face blank. ‘That’s why I sent it off for analysis. But it didn’t have anything illegal in it.’
‘No. It didn’t.’ And Liv hadn’t realised the significance of it any more than I had, until I’d read the lab report.
Derwent frowned at me. ‘But …’
‘One phone call,’ I said. ‘Then we need to talk to the boss.’
‘What have you got?’ Una Burt looked up, expectant.
‘Good news and bad news,’ I said.
‘What’s the good news?’
‘I’ve solved one mystery. When Kate Emery was temping at the clinic, she looked up one archived file. That file belonged to Eleanor and Oliver Norris. They were treated at the clinic for fertility issues when Kate was working there as a nurse.’
‘When they moved in, Kate must have recognised them,’ Derwent said. ‘As soon as she heard the story that Bethany was a miracle baby, she’d have known one of them was lying.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Oliver Norris is completely infertile,’ I said. ‘I’ve checked with the lab and they confirmed it from the used condom we found in Harold Lowe’s house.’
‘So Bethany isn’t his daughter,’ Derwent said. ‘No miracle. And Kate knew it. Whatever Eleanor did to get pregnant – whether it was a donor or an affair – she didn’t want her husband knowing about it.’
‘Do you think Kate was blackmailing her?’ Una Burt asked.
‘Why else would she have looked them up on the system?’ I said. ‘It had to be more than curiosity. She must have known she was taking a risk, so it was worth it to her to forfeit her temporary employment at the clinic to find out about Eleanor. Her business was already in trouble then. She needed cash, urgently, and her ex-husband wasn’t going to be any use when his wife was arguing over every penny he handed over.’
‘But blackmail is a big step,’ Burt said.