‘And this is the slit lamp I was taking about,’ Hawley said.
In the middle of the room was a table on wheels on which sat a tall, thin, skeletal-looking instrument on one side of which were some eye pieces. Anna nodded and scanned the room. There was another chair and an array of instruments attached to the wall; she recognised a blood pressure cuff but the other bits slotted into holders meant nothing to her.
Hawley caught her staring. ‘Ophthalmoscope, otoscope, electronic thermometer and sphyg,’ he said.
‘So, once you’d applied the drops to Rosie and they’d worked, you brought her in here?
‘Yes,’ Hawley said.
‘Erm well, no, not actually here. We took her next door, remember?’
Coleen took them to a second room, this one bigger with an adjustable couch, a desk, a couple of chairs and much better lighting. ‘Yes. We brought the slit lamp in here because equipment was being serviced in the eye room.’
‘OK,’ Anna said. ‘She came in here, you examined her on her mum’s knee. Then on the slit lamp.’
‘Yes. Then I sat at that desk.’ Hawley pointed. ‘Rosie and her mum sat on that chair.’ He pointed towards the other corner.
‘And you were the only other person in the room the whole time?’ Anna asked Coleen.
‘All the time.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘I think we put a pad on Rosie’s eye. One with a teddy bear on it,’ Coleen said. ‘I went back to the station to write everything up.’
‘OK,’ Anna said. ‘Great.’ She walked out into the treatment area and looked around, leaving Coleen and Hawley alone to catch up.
She stared out into the treatment area, swarming with staff, at the sitting area beyond rapidly filling with the sick and injured waiting for succour. She knew she was clutching at straws in coming here. But something had pulled her in this direction. Hawley’s theory? Hawley himself?
She’d read all the pertinent documents from the previous investigation. They’d taken statements from staff at the hospital to corroborate Hawley’s account, Coleen included. And later, they’d requested copies of the CCTV footage that backed up his story of where he was at the time Rosie was abducted. Their interest was not in the hospital; it was in the man who worked there and who’d had such intimate contact with Rosie.
A one-off incident.
There’d been no reason to extend the investigation into the unit or the hospital itself, other than to eliminate any possible known offenders. And that would not have been difficult since all hospital workers would have been run through the Disclosure and Barring Service as a matter of course prior to their employment. So where did you draw the line? You could not interview everyone who’d visited the A and E that day. What about the day-trippers who’d been to Sudeley Castle at the same time that Rosie had visited? Or everyone at the motorway service station the Dawsons stopped off at on their way up from Bristol that morning?
It was simply impossible.
She turned as Hawley came out of the room to join her, his expression unreadable.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Say I wanted information on a victim. Address, family history.’
‘It’ll all be recorded in the notes by the triage nurse.’ Hawley pointed towards a set of wall-hung files in vertical slots. Each slot labelled with pathway areas: triage, awaiting X-ray, awaiting doctor, awaiting treatment. ‘These days the notes are slimmed down as this is A and E. Basic information. Name, date of birth, address, allergies, history of the illness or trauma. It’s a pro-forma document. When I was here nine years ago it was more a free-text system. Everything written by hand. Which is also what you’re much more likely to find in the other hospital areas. Files that are an inch thick stuffed with illegible handwriting, social worker’s reports, blood results. That sort of thing.’
‘So, anyone who wanted information would have to have access to these files, or files like them?’
‘Exactly.’
Anna stood and watched the flow of paper that followed, or sometimes arrived before, the patients. All returning to the central hub. ‘Do they sometimes get lost?’
‘Here, no. These notes never leave the unit. If someone is transferred out, they send copies. It’s common to lose them for a few minutes, easy to put down and forget where they are, but they’re never lost because they’re kept here. Very different from other hospital areas. There, they’d be stored centrally and sent to the appropriate clinic.’
‘But they never leave the premises, am I right?’
‘Yes, I would say that.’
‘If your theory is correct, then it must be someone inside the unit or hospital or clinic who has access to the information. To the files. They couldn’t be stealing these notes.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And what sort of person would have access to all areas?’
‘Doctors, of course. And nurses. But as I said, it’s impossible to envisage any one member of medical personnel working in all these different hospitals and areas.’
Anna nodded. Another blank wall. They’d cross-referenced all the hospitals on Hawley’s list for common personnel and come up with nothing.
Patterns. That was what she was searching for. Some tiny thread that might link things together. There came a point when disparate, unconnected bits of information either remained dried-up fragments swept into a corner or became significant pieces of a mosaic. At that point, what appeared to be coincidences became vital intelligence loaded with damning evidence.
As she looked out into the A and E department in front of her, for now all Anna saw were scraps floating on the wind. She wanted to reach out and grab one, pull it to her, digest it. But they were too high up and way out of reach.
Thirty-Five
That same Friday morning, Kevin Starkey drove around to the south, taking Brunel Way to meet the A370, out towards the Somerset Levels.
At first there was traffic heading out towards the airport, but he soon lost that after Backwell. He drove through Congresbury, the Mendip Hills to the south, the M5 creating an artificial barrier to the west. But he didn’t need to go that far. This was the old Easton Road, a busy A road. Some enterprising people had set up off-site parking for the airport along this stretch. But it was too far out to be busy. Old farms had turned into breakers’ yards and places where people who believed a wet weekend on a bleak coastline was better than a wet weekend at home could buy caravans. But there were still some residential properties.
Pux Cottage on Wird Lane was one such.
He pulled onto the verge. It was dangerous; double white lines along this stretch meant he was blocking traffic. But the lane gate was tied with rope. Quickly, he got out, untied the rope and swung the gates inwards. He got back in and drove along the pitted stone road into a narrow parking space in front of a dilapidated stone bungalow.
He’d begun the project when Brenda was still living with him. Transforming Dunroamin, she’d called it.
Dunroamin.
Of course, it wasn’t really called that, but she’d hated its proper name, Pux Cottage. So, she’d christened it Dunroamin in another attempt at jocularity. A failed attempt.
He’d lived with his parents in this house for nigh on twenty years. His father had died there, the cigarettes and alcohol firmly strangling his coronaries into occlusion. His widowed mother had languished there on the edge of dementia for years afterwards until she went into a home and never came out.