Book Excerpt
Lauren gave their names at reception, and they were ushered into a meeting room with a hard-wearing carpet and soft chairs. DI Dalby couldn’t join them, they were told, but PC Knighton would be with them shortly. In the meantime, would they like tea? Coffee?
“Well, this looks promising,” said Lauren.
“Does it?” asked Emily.
She sat down, then got up again, not sure which would make the better impression.
“This is a meeting room,” said Lauren. “There’s no recording equipment, so unless they’re playing games, they haven’t got any more questions for you. I’m pretty sure the DI would be coming if he thought you were a serial killer.”
“I suppose,” said Emily. “I wish it wasn’t PC Knighton, though.”
“That name rings a bell,” said Lauren. “Where do I know him from?”
He arrived before she’d found the answer.
“Miss Brewster,” he said. “Ms Cottesmore. Thank you for coming in today. We were just about to contact you.”
He was around their age, good-looking, with an open boyish face and a ready smile, and Lauren’s heart sank. Why did it have to be him? The day PC Knighton and his colleague had warned her about Karl had been the most humiliating day of her life, and the shame and embarrassment flooded back.
But she was here for Emily, and that meant being confident and professional. He wouldn’t remember anyway. It was well over a year ago. As far as he was concerned, she was a solicitor representing her client and that’s all there was to it. He wouldn’t make the connection. Ok, bad cop, she thought, meet bad-ass lawyer.
“This is disgraceful,” she said. “My client has been left in limbo.”
“Unfortunately, investigations into serious offences do take time,” he said.
“I’m well aware of that, Constable Knighton,” she said. “But thanks to your press release, it was public knowledge that she’d been taken in for questioning. Having caused so much damage to her reputation, you had a responsibility to expedite your enquiries.”
“Perhaps if your client hadn’t spoken to the press herself …” he said.
Lauren made to retort, but he was quicker to speak.
“Look, I’m sure you both understand that we have to take murder investigations seriously. If I could just …”
“Potential murder investigations,” said Lauren. “Did you find any evidence of the misuse of drugs?”
She was pushing her luck, but he had a point about Emily talking to the papers, and she needed to re-assert dominance.
“No, we didn’t, but …”
“Did you find any evidence of my client accessing drugs at the hospice?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “St Joseph’s have a very thorough and effective control system.”
“Did you find any evidence of my client accessing dangerous drugs in any other way or from any other source?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “There was no indication that any medi-cation or drugs had been obtained or used inappropriately.”
He was on the back foot, so Lauren pressed on.
“Did the post-mortems indicate anything suspicious?”
“As I said, there was no indication that anything had been obtained or used inappropriately. In fact, the deaths were all confirmed as being caused by the terminal illnesses from which the patients were suffering. One was caused by a heart attack in an individual who’d had several before, including one earlier the same day. Where post-mortem information was available, the level of medication was always found to have been appropriate to the patient’s condition and in accordance with their medical records.”
“So, where’s your forensic evidence of unlawful death?” asked Lauren.
“We don’t have any,” he said.
“Do you have any witnesses against my client?”
“No,” he said. “The people we interviewed with first-hand experience of Miss Brewster all spoke highly of her. Indeed, several of the victims’ relatives …”
Seeing that Lauren was about to correct him, he interrupted himself.
“Sorry, quite right, several of the relatives of the deceased – expressed disbelief that we’d identified her as a suspect at all. One gentleman did give a rather lurid statement, but it transpired that he hadn’t been in contact with your client, and none of the information he gave us was verifiable. On further investigation, we found similarities between his story and the previous week’s episode of Holby City. He subsequently retracted the statement.”
“So, you have no evidence and no credible witnesses,” said Lauren, disconcerted by his honesty. “What does that leave you with?”
“Just two things,” he said. “Neither of which, I should say, would hold up in court. The first was a widely shared belief among patients and some of the staff, that Miss Brewster helped people to die.”
“If enough people said she was a witch, would you burn her?” asked Lauren.
She’d gone too far, and he took a moment longer than usual to reply.
“If people said she’d caused them harm,” he said, “we’d be duty bound to determine whether there was any concrete evidence of criminal activity. The legal process, I believe, falls more within your area of expertise.”
He was right, but it was beside the point.
“Two things, you said.”
“The pattern of deaths.”
He took a graph out of a manila folder and slid it across the table.
“It’s very small,” she said. “I can’t make out the details.”
“It spans a period of a few months before Miss Brewster began visiting the hospice, for the purposes of comparison,” he said, leaning over to point.
Lauren leant forward too, and they turned their heads sideways to read the text. He smelt good, with a faint whiff of a woody fragrance, but nothing overpowering. Was it his shampoo, she wondered, or his shower gel?
“The volunteering began here,” he said, pointing. “The number of deaths continues to fluctuate at first, with no discernible peaks until a little later – about here – when the pattern becomes quite regular. Are you alright Ms Cottesmore?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” said Lauren, reaching into her bag for water.
“Are you ok, hon?” asked Emily. “Lauren’s mum was at the hospice,” she explained. “She was the first person I visited there.”
“Let’s focus on the case in hand, shall we, Miss Brewster?” said Lauren, with a frown. “So, PC Knighton, if I understand you correctly, putting aside unsubstantiated speculation, this is all the actual ‘evidence’ you have: the circumstantial coincidence of an alleged correlation between my client’s visits and these ‘peaks’ as you call them.”
“That’s correct,” he said.
“And I assume you’ve mapped them against shift patterns to identify any suspects among the staff?”
“Of course,” he said. “We looked for other suspects and for evidence of collusion. There was one member of staff on duty on most of these occasions. Indeed, there had been a degree of agency on his part in ensuring that his shifts coincided with Miss Brewster’s visits. It was a name which had come up in connection with your client in a number of witness statements too. However, there were cast-iron alibis for several key periods, and no anomalies in his handling of drugs. We therefore eliminated him from our enquiries.”
“Are you talking about Steve?” asked Emily.
PC Knighton consulted his notes.
“A Mr Steven Stapleford.”
“I can’t believe you suspected Steve!” said Emily, quicker to anger on his behalf than her own. “That’s just ridiculous.”
“That’s all very well,” said Lauren, trying to re-focus the discussion. “But I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that correlation is not causation.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “In fact, if you look at the totals for each month, you’ll see that the number of deaths remains consistent with the previous year on a month-by-month basis, allowing for some small fluctuations in the number of patients. In short, there was no increase in the death rate.”
“Now that’s interesting,” said Lauren. She examined the data more closely. “I was looking at mortality figures on the National Stats website for another case, just recently. There’s always a dip towards the end of the year and then it goes up again in January, as if people are deliberately hanging on for Christmas.”
“Our medical expert made a similar point,” he said. “It occurs around other festivals too, depending on religion and heritage, and she thought that might help explain what we’ve observed here.”
He leant forward again so their faces were almost touching.
“Do you see,” he said. “There’s actually a slight dip at the beginning of each week, as if in anticipation.”
“The numbers are small,” said Lauren.
He reached into his folder again. “On this graph,” he said, “we’ve charted the same data by days of the week. The trends are much clearer.”
“That’s amazing!” said Lauren. “Em, look at this. It’s almost as if they were holding on: waiting for your visit.”
Although she stared at the graphs for a while, Emily struggled to take it in.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“We presented the evidence …” continued PC Knighton.
“Such as it is,” interjected Lauren.
“Such at it is,” he agreed, “… to the CPS …”
“That’s the Crown Prosecution Service,” Lauren explained.
“… and they concluded that without more compelling evidence, there was no case to answer.”
“Have you found any?” she asked.
“Despite the best efforts of a substantial number of officers in an extremely well-resourced enquiry, we found nothing to indicate that there was anything suspicious about any of these deaths,” he said.
“Do you get what that means?” asked Lauren, gripping Emily’s arm.
“I think so,” she said, and shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
“It means they’ve finally figured out not only that you’re not a murderer, but also that no-one’s been murdered,” she said. “Will there be a statement to that effect, PC Knighton? To clear my client’s name.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’ll say that we’ve fast-tracked this case owing to the level of public interest and that after a thorough investigation into all aspects of what appeared to be an unusual pattern of deaths, the CPS are satisfied there’s no evidence of foul play.”
“I can’t believe it!” Emily whispered.
“I’m only sorry DI Dalby wasn’t able to talk to you today,” he said.
“It’s pretty shoddy, isn’t it?” fumed Lauren, determined to have her fight. “To put Em – my client – through all of this without any apology or explanation … If we hadn’t got in touch, would you have left her hanging on for ever?”
“We would have been in touch,” said PC Knighton.
He took a deep breath and when he spoke next, his tone was more earnest than professional.
“Actually. Look, I agree with you. I shouldn’t say this and obviously I can’t speak for anyone else, but on a personal level – and I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me – I do want to say how sorry I am, Miss Brewster. You didn’t deserve any of this.”
“Don’t worry,” said Emily, taken aback by his humanity. “Really. I know you had to investigate. It’s fine, honestly.”
It took him a moment to find his voice and Emily’s face creased in sympathy.
“I let my personal feelings influence my behaviour,” he said, his eyes shining. “Sorry. It was a bit close to home.”
“You ok?” asked Lauren.
When he looked up, they held each other’s gaze for a moment too long. His eyes were warm and brown, soft and kind.
“Ok,” said Lauren. “Right. We should go.”
Link to buy the novel: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0B3RW3N3M?&tag=
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