Chameleon

'Of course,' said Jamieson. 'But it was still very quick.'

'In truth, the police suspected it might be Louise Chapman. They found her car parked in a lane at the back of the hospital.'

'I see,' said Jamieson.

'Am I to presume that this might have some direct relevance to your investigation?' asked Macmillan.

'It's possible,' said Jamieson. I'm not sure.'

'It sounds as if things up there are not as straight forward as one might have imagined?' said Macmillan.

'That's true,' said Jamieson, hoping that he would get away with not saying any more for the present.

'Need any help?'

'Not yet.'

'Keep in touch.'

Jamieson had obtained the address of St Serf's Church from the phone book. The good thing about looking for a church, he mused as he turned off into a leafy avenue west of Harden Road, was that you could see it a long way off. The spire of St Serf's had guided him for the last half mile until now when he was faced with having to find a parking space among the Volvos and other quality cars that were lined up outside the church hall. It was that kind of an area, pleasant, comfortable, pretty. The church itself stood in a well-tended graveyard and had Virginia creeper growing along its south wall. At the moment it was green but Jamieson could imagine it turning to red in the autumn and complementing the yellow leaves which would fall from the birch trees by the boundary wall.

In the end, Jamieson found a space some two hundred metres down the road. He was a bit close to the entrance to one of the driveways but not close enough, he reckoned, to constitute a real obstruction so he left the car and started to walk back towards the church. He could hear singing coming from the hall that was tacked on to the side of the main building and he could see lights on inside. He checked his watch. It was five minutes to ten. Maybe they would finish at ten?

Jamieson strolled up one side of the street and down the other. It was a nice evening. The gardens of the large houses had obviously benefited from the soaking they had had earlier in the day and the mixed scent of the flowers was heavy in the still evening air. It made him think of Kent and Susie. He was wondering how to go about telling her that he would not be coming home at the week-end when he saw that people were beginning to emerge from the church hall. He took up a position almost opposite the entrance to the hall and waited for Thelwell to emerge.

At first, the pavement outside the church was crowded with groups of people laughing and discussing how the evening had gone and Jamieson had to keep his wits about him to avoid missing Thelwell among the people he saw moving off. As the minutes passed and the crowds thinned, Jamieson found himself considering that somehow he had missed him. The slamming doors and starting cars were now becoming less frequent. The avenue was returning to its accustomed peace and quiet and he had still not seen Thelwell come out.

It was another ten minutes before a woman, carrying a bundle of papers under her arm and a key in her mouth, turned round as she emerged and locked the door. Jamieson, feeling bemused but still fairly confident that he had not missed Thelwell among the earlier crowds, approached her and excused himself.

'I was rather hoping to catch Gordon Thelwell this evening,' he said pleasantly. 'Could I have missed him?'

'Oh no,' exclaimed the woman. 'Mr Thelwell wasn't here this evening.'

'Oh,' said Jamieson working at keeping the surprise off his face.

'Are you sure?'

'Mr Thelwell hasn't been coming to practice for some time,' volunteered the woman. 'He's too busy at the hospital these days I understand. He's a surgeon you know. They've been having a bit of trouble with one thing and another.'

'Of course,' replied Jamieson distantly. 'I should have considered that.'

Jamieson sat behind the wheel of his car with another unpleasant discovery to digest. All these choir practises that Thelwell said he had been going to were a fabrication. A lie. What had he really been doing on these evenings? Where was he tonight? Was it relevant to the problem at the hospital?

Jamieson drove round in circles for a while, trying to make sense of it all before deciding finally to drive to the street where Thelwell lived. It was now his intention to confront Thelwell openly with what he had discovered. He parked the car on the other side of the road some fifty metres along from Thelwell's house and settled down to wait.

At eleven thirty, his vigil was rewarded. Thelwell's dark green Volvo estate car turned into the street and Jamieson prepared to get out of his car. He had expected Thelwell to park outside his house on the street or at least to get out to open the gates in front of his drive. On this pretext it had been his plan to intercept him on the pavement. But, in the event, Thelwell swung his car in towards the gates and they opened automatically at the signal from some device on the car. By the time Jamieson reached the house the gates had closed again and Thelwell was putting the car away in the garage.

Light spilled out into the garden from the open front door and Thelwell's wife was framed in the doorway. 'You're late dear,' Jamieson heard her say.

'The practice went on a bit longer than I thought and then I had a quick drink with Roger Denby,' replied Thelwell.

Thelwell was a very plausible liar, thought Jamieson. He had sounded perfectly natural when replying to his wife. He considered whether or not he should confront Thelwell there and then in front of his wife but then decided against it. For the moment it was enough for him to know that Thelwell had been lying to everyone, including his wife. He walked back to his car thoughtfully and drove back to the hospital.

The phone in his room was ringing when Jamieson got in. He hurriedly unlocked the door and rushed over to snatch it from its cradle, feeling certain that the caller would hang up the moment he touched it. It was Sue.

'Where have you been?' she asked. 'I've been trying your number for ages.'

'I had to go out,' said Jamieson weakly.

'Daddy has invited us to have dinner with him on Saturday. I said we'd be delighted.'

'Sue, there's a problem.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't think I can come home this week-end.'

'But…' Sue's voice trailed off into silence.

'I'm sorry, really I am but the way things are going I just can't get away.'

'I see,' said Sue distantly. 'That's a pity. I had something to tell you.'

'Really? What?'

'It will have to wait for some time when you're not so busy.' The phone went dead.

'Shit,' said Jamieson quietly. It was unlike Sue to be like that. She must be very disappointed.

Jamieson was up at seven. He was washed, shaved and out of his room by seven thirty and had breakfasted. He was in his little room in the Microbiology department by eight. The morning cleaners were emptying waste paper baskets outside in the corridor. They pooled all the waste in a large bin which they wheeled around the department on a small wheeled bogie.

'It's getting so you are afraid to go out at night,' he heard one of them say.

'My Stan won't let me,' declared the other positively. 'Not after last night. It was less than quarter of a mile away from us!'

'Makes you think don't it.'

Jamieson felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 'Last night? What had happened last night? He opened the door of his room and one of the cleaners clutched her arms across her chest in fright. 'Oh my God!' she exclaimed. 'You gave me such a fright. I thought for a moment you were him!'

'Who?' asked Jamieson.

'The maniac. The ripper,' replied the woman.

'You said something about last night,' said Jamieson.

'The swine killed another woman last night. I was just telling Ruby here. It was only half a mile down the road from where I stay.'

'Another woman?'