your bomb factory.’ She tossed the bagged phone to Sam and made the ‘shoo’ gesture with her free hand. ‘An anonymous tip. Didn’t want to bother you with it until we were sure it panned out.’ She winked at Chris and Kevin. ‘No, we haven’t touched a thing. You never know what might be booby-trapped…No, I’ll have my officers wait here for you.’ She gave him the address and ended the call. ‘When the CTC get here, you’re free to go.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s been a long day. We’ll reconvene at eight tomorrow.’
Walking across the cracked tarmac to her car, Carol felt every minute of that long day. Her muscles ached and her body craved a drink. There were plenty of bottles at home, stacked in the rack, waiting for her. But she had one more call to make before she could choose one of those. Maybe she could stop at an off-licence, pick out a decent red, something good to share. He’d like that. And it gave her all the excuse she needed to slip into the comforting embrace of alcohol. Anything to take her mind away from those twisted and torn bodies. When she closed her eyes, she did not want to revisit the injured, the dying and the dead.
The waiting area of A&E at Bradfield Cross had nothing to recommend it as a place to spend a Saturday night. People wandered around with plastic cups of tea, bottles of water and cans of fizzy drinks, looking dazed and miserable. The chairs were full of bewildered and exhausted relatives of the injured, their children sleeping or grizzling. Journalists kept sneaking in and drifted from person to person, trying to get some quotes before they were spotted and ordered out. The department had been closed to routine casualties, which provoked frequent loud arguments with the security guards, battles which threatened to spill over from the verbal to the physical at any moment. When Paula arrived, a pair of drunks with bloody faces had been remonstrating with the security guards. She had walked straight up to them, face to face and toe to toe with the noisier one. ‘Fuck off now or spend the night in the cells,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t you know what happened here today? Take your scratches somewhere else.’
The drunk thought about it for a millisecond then, seeing something implacable in her face, he backed off. ‘Fucking dyke pig bitch,’ he shouted once he was far enough away.
The security guards looked almost impressed. ‘If we could threaten them like that, we’d have no trouble of a night,’ one said, holding the door open for her.
‘You obviously need more dyke pig bitches to teach you how to do it, she muttered as she waded through the sea of miserable humanity to the desk. She looked up at the clock. Ten past ten. Her interview with Jana Jankowicz felt like half a lifetime away. A receptionist with cornrows and nails that could have been stripped off and used as luges for small children gave her a cool, weary look. ‘I’m looking for Dr Blessing,’ she said, producing her ID.
The receptionist sniffed. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Take seat,’ she added automatically.
Paula wanted to laugh and to cry simultaneously. ‘I’ll just wait here, if it’s all right with you.’ She leaned against the counter and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the discordant background noises.
A touch on her arm made her start back to full consciousness. Elinor Blessing was looking at her with a faint smile. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought only junior doctors could actually sleep standing up.’
Paula cracked a smile. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said. ‘Thanks for seeing me. I know you’re run off your feet today.’
‘It’s eased up now,’ Elinor said, leading Paula back into the main wing of the hospital. ‘We’ve pretty much done all we can down here. It’s just that we’ve still got some patients who really need to be admitted, only we’ve not got beds for them here. You’ve saved me from having to call round to try and find somewhere for them to go.’
They ended up in a doctors’ coffee room on the third floor. It reminded Paula of every similar room she’d ever been in. The same battered chairs past their best, rickety tables marked with rings, unmatching mugs and hectoring notices about washing up, stealing biscuits and putting rubbish in bins. Elinor got a couple of mugs of coffee from a machine and plonked one in front of Paula. ‘That should keep you awake till some time next week. It’s junior-doctor strength.’
‘Thanks.’ Paula didn’t know why this woman was being so nice to her, but she wasn’t about to fight it. She took a sip of coffee and found no grounds to disagree with Elinor’s assessment of the brew. ‘So, Tom Cross. You think he was poisoned?’ Paula took out her notebook.
Elinor shook her head. ‘When I spoke to someone earlier, that’s what I thought. Now I’ve had some of the labs back, I don’t think so. I know so.’
‘OK. And what did your tests tell you?’
Elinor fiddled with her mug. ‘Most doctors, the only poisoning they’ll ever see is when people take deliberate or accidental overdoses. We’re not trained to look for it. Not really. So it’s very weird for me to see two cases of deliberate poisoning in the same week. At first, I thought I was imagining things. But wasn’t. Tom Cross was deliberately poisoned with a cardiac glycoside.’
‘Can you spell that for me?’ Paula gave Elinor her best pathetic shrug. ‘And then can you tell me what it is?’
Elinor took the notebook from her and wrote it down. ‘A cardiac glycoside is a naturally occurring compound, generally found in plants. It acts primarily on the heart, either beneficially or not, depending on the glycoside in question and on how much you absorb. An example would be foxgloves, which are the source of digoxin. It’s used as a heart medicine, but the wrong dose will kill you.’ She handed back the notebook with a smile.
‘So is that what killed Tom Cross? Foxgloves?’
‘No. What killed him was oleander.’
‘Oleander?’
‘You’ve probably seen it on holiday abroad. It’s a bushy shrub with narrow leaves and the flowers are pink or white. It’s pretty common and it’s very poisonous. I looked it up earlier. There’s a story that some of Napoleon’s soldiers used oleander twigs to kebab their meat with and by morning they were dead. There is an antidote, but often patients die before they can absorb enough of it to make a difference. And to be honest, when you consider Tom Cross’s age and weight, his heart probably wasn’t in great shape to start with. He didn’t have much of a chance. I’m sorry. I know he used to be a police officer.’
‘I never knew him when he was in the job,’ Paula said. ‘But my boss did. So, Dr Blessing…’
‘Elinor. It’s Elinor, please.’
Was she flirting? Paula was too tired to work it out. Or, to be honest, to care. Tonight, all she wanted were the facts, so she could go home and sleep. The coffee wasn’t working, apparently. She stifled a yawn. ‘So, Elinor, have you got any idea when this poison would have been administered? And how?’
