‘Anything he could sell. Tranquillizers. Painkillers. It was very cleverly done – just small amounts, but regular as clockwork so that the system could factor in the losses.’
‘Is that possible? Surely everything is balanced up – drugs in, drugs out?’
Her hand went to her graceful throat.
‘Yes. Good point.’ She tried a smile but gave up. ‘The books showed no discrepancy.’
Dryden nodded to fill the silence. ‘Who kept the books?’
‘My predecessor – the senior pharmacist.’
‘And what happened to him?’
‘
‘Right. So Paul Gedney gets to face the full weight of the law and does a runner while the chemist gets to flick through the time-share brochures?’
She held out her hands, palms up, and Dryden noticed how pale the skin there was. ‘I don’t think anything could be proved in that respect, at least not beyond doubt. And the pharmacist was ill, although the disease was at a very early stage. Bringing a criminal action against a clinician or a professional within the service is very difficult. But Paul had been seen selling the drugs – on several occasions. There was a dossier on him, pictures, statements.’
‘Is the pharmacist still alive?’
‘She died. Her husband was a doctor – an eye specialist – and we see him sometimes. But they separated soon after she left the NHS. He’s based at the Royal in Lynn, but there’s a visiting clinic here.’
Dryden stood. ‘What was her name – your predecessor?’
She stood too, again the tea cup and saucer beautifully poised. ‘Lutton. Elizabeth Lutton. Actually, I can show you…’
Leading the way, she quickly climbed the stairs to the main corridor above. She took him to an echoing Victorian entrance hall dominated by a Grecian bust, which was dusty and unnamed. On the wall there was a framed colour photograph of a man in a suit cutting a ribbon.
‘The day they opened the day clinic, it’s out the back across the car park. A Portakabin. That’s her.’
She pointed at a woman amongst the dignitaries gathered in the background. She was younger than Dryden expected, perhaps thirty-five, an unsatisfied smile lighting up a broad face, framed in buttery-yellow blonde hair. Something about the hair conjured up a memory for Dryden: two pale bodies moving together in the dappled sunshine of the dunes.
‘And the husband?’ he asked.
‘Dr George Lutton. Not pictured. I doubt if he’ll talk, Mr Dryden.’
‘Any of the family left – Gedney’s mother?’
She shook her head. ‘She died. Very soon after Paul’s disappearance. There was a funeral, I remember that, at the Catholic church. The family was a sprawling one – there was another brother, and two or three sisters, I think. All of them – except the other brother – were younger than Paul and the father couldn’t hack it so they all went back into care. It was dreadful to see.’
The hair on Dryden’s neck prickled. ‘Back into care? These children were fostered by the Gedneys?’
A minibus arrived outside the main doors and a group of elderly patients began to bustle through, filling the marble hall with voices.
‘Yes. She was a foster mother, although I think the illness made it difficult in the last few years. That was why Paul was so determined to try and support her. There was a lot at stake. He’d come to her when he was pretty young, I think. Before that he’d been in care – not locally – more your part of the Fens, I think – Ely.’
33
Humph pulled the Capri over into a lay-by on the edge of town. Beside the road a dyke lay frozen, smoking in the midday sun, a starburst of cracks where someone had lobbed a lump of concrete onto the surface. To the southeast the Fen stretched, iced furrows and the occasional wind-cowed hawthorn the only features on a landscape rolled flat by a heavy sky. Dryden’s trained eye skipped along the spirit-level of the horizon until he found the distinctive double bump of Ely Cathedral – the Octagon and West Towers visible from twenty-five miles, and as familiar as Humph’s lugubrious profile.
Dryden nibbled the pastry edge of a pork pie while Humph rummaged in chip paper. He rang the number for the Dolphin and got the daytime receptionist: Laura was still in the pool and would then be taken back to the chalet for a rest and sleep. Then he retrieved a text message from the mobile.
DRYDEN. WE’LL BE THERE 9.00AM TOMORROW. BE AVAILABLE. READE
‘Shit,’ said Dryden.
He turned to Humph. ‘You said you’d seen someone on the beach last night?’
‘Yup. The woman who runs the place, with the blonde hair. She walked along the beach about 11.30 after the lights went out at reception. Met a bloke on the sands – compact, black leather jacket, pony tail. They went back to the cottage by the lighthouse. Lights on downstairs, then upstairs, then just upstairs. She reappeared this morning – sevenish. Different jacket, different jogging pants.’
‘Bravo,’ said Dryden. ‘You could do divorces – pays well.’
Humph licked the chip paper as Dryden considered the implications of Ruth Connor’s nocturnal stroll along the beach. He was hardly surprised she’d found solace somewhere, perhaps anywhere, after thirty years of virtual widowhood, but he wondered how much Chips Connor had been told.
