‘Have it serviced regular, do you?’
‘I don’t know, it’s not my area of responsibility,’ the first voice said. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘I suggest we reset it, sir, and hope it’s just a one-off.’ The light died and the door closed. I exhaled slowly and quietly. I gave it five minutes, then I stepped out cautiously onto the landing. Nothing happened. I waved my arms around in a bizarre parody of a Hollywood babe work-out video. Still nothing.
I couldn’t believe it. They’d spent a small fortune on perimeter security and a video camera, but they didn’t have any internal tremblers or passive infrared detectors. And there I’d been, planning to keep setting the alarm off at five-minute intervals until they finally abandoned the building with an unset alarm. I almost felt cheated.
From what Alexis had told me, the second locked door I’d tried had been Helen Maitland’s consulting room. I kneeled down in front of the door and turned on my headlamp. Interestingly, the lock on her consulting room had cost twice the total of all three front-door locks. A seven-lever deadbolt mortice. Just out of curiosity, I took a quick look at the other locked door. A straightforward three-lever lock that a ten-year-old with a Swiss Army knife could have been through in less time than it takes an expert to complete the first level of Donkey Kong. Helen Maitland hadn’t been taking any chances.
It took nearly fifteen minutes of total concentration for me to get past the lock. I closed the door softly behind me and shone the torch in a slow arc round the room, like a bad movie. More wall-to-wall heavy-duty carpet in the same shade of champagne. Their carpet-cleaning bill must have been phenomenal. Curtained screen folded against the wall. Examination couch. Sink. Grey metal filing cabinet. Shredder. Printer table with an ink jet on it. Tall cupboard with drawers underneath. A leather chair with a writing surface attached to the right arm, set at an angle to a two-seater sofa covered in cream canvas. No pictures on the walls. No rugs, just basic hard- wearing, pale green, industrial-weight carpet. No desk. No computer. At least I knew it wasn’t going to take me long to search. And by the look of things, nobody had been here before me.
I started on the filing cabinet. I was glad to see it was one of the old-fashioned ones that can be unlocked by tipping them back and releasing the lock bar from below. Filing-cabinet locks are a pig to pick, and I’d had enough fiddling with small pieces of metal for one night. I was doubly glad I hadn’t had to pick it when I finally got to examine the contents. The bottom drawer contained photostats of articles in medical journals and offprints of published papers. A couple of the articles had Sarah Blackstone’s name among the contributors, and I tucked them into the waistband of my trousers.
The next drawer up contained a couple of gynaecological textbooks and a pile of literature about artificial insemination. The drawer above that was partly filled with sealed packets of A4 printer paper. The top drawer held a kettle, three mugs, an assortment of fruit teas and a jar of honey. The cupboard held medical supplies. Metal contraptions I didn’t want to be able to put a name to. Boxes of surgical gloves. Those overgrown lollipop sticks that appear whenever it’s cervical smear time. The drawers underneath were empty except for a near- empty box of regular tampons. I love it when I’m snowed under with clues.
I sat back on my heels and looked around. The only sign that anyone had ever used this room was the shredder, whose bin was half full. But I knew there was no point in trying to get anything from that. Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom and to reassemble shredded print-outs. But I couldn’t believe that Helen Maitland had left nothing at all in her consulting room. That was turning paranoia into a fine art.
I knew from Alexis that the doctor worked with a laptop rather than a pen and paper, keying everything in as she went along. Even so, I’d have expected to find something, even if it was only a letterhead. I decided to have another look in the less obvious places. Under the examination couch: nothing except dust. Under the sofa cushions: not even biscuit crumbs.
It was taped to the underside of one of the drawers below the cupboard. A card-backed envelope containing three computer disks. I slid them out of the envelope and into the inside pocket of Richard’s jacket. I checked my watch. I’d been inside the room getting on for twenty minutes and I didn’t think there was anything more to learn here.
Back on the landing, I locked the door behind me. No point in telegraphing my visit to the world. I started off down the stairs, but just before I reached the first-floor landing, I realized there was a glow of light from downstairs. Cautiously, I crouched down, edged forward and peered through the bannisters. Almost directly below me, sitting on the bottom stairs was the unmistakable foreshortened figure of a police officer.
Chapter 11
To be accused of one summary offence is unfortunate; to be accused of two within a twenty-four-hour period looks remarkably like carelessness. And since a reputation for carelessness doesn’t bring clients to the door, I decided this wasn’t a good time to attract the attention of the officer on the stairs. I shrank back from the bannisters and crept towards the upper flight of stairs. In the gloom, I noticed what I hadn’t before. There actually were passive infrared sensors high in the corners of the stairwell; they were the ultra-modern ones that don’t actually show a light when they’re triggered. The reason nothing had happened when I’d waved my arms around on the upper landing earlier was that the alarm hadn’t been switched on. Thank God for the need to impress clients with the luxury carpeting.
As I crouched at the foot of the second flight, I heard the crackle of the policeman’s personal radio. I sidled forward again, trying to hear what he was saying. ‘…still here in St John Street,’ I made out. ‘…burglar-alarm bloke arrives. The key holder’s worried…Yeah, drugs, expensive equipment…should be here by now…OK, Sarge.’
Now I knew what was going on. The key holder had been nervous of leaving the building with what seemed to be a faulty alarm. Presumably, they had a maintenance contract that provided for twenty-four-hour call-out, and he’d decided to take advantage of it. It probably hadn’t been difficult to pitch the Dibble into hanging around until the burglar-alarm technician arrived. It was a cold night out there, and minding a warm clinic had to be an improvement on cruising the early-morning streets with nothing more uplifting to deal with than nightclub brawls or drunken domestics.
I tiptoed back up to the top floor and considered my options. No way could I get past the copper. Once the burglar-alarm technician arrived and reset the system, I wasn’t going to be able to get out without setting off the alarm again, and this time they’d realize it couldn’t be a fault. OK, I’d be long gone, but with a murder investigation going on that might just lead back here, I didn’t want any suspicious circumstances muddying the waters.
For all of five seconds, I considered the fire door leading off the half-landing below me. Chances were the hinges would squeak, the security lights would be on a separate system from the burglar alarm and I’d be spotlit on a fire escape with an apron full of exotica that I couldn’t pretend was my knitting bag. Not to mention a pocketful of computer disks that might well tie me right into an even bigger crime. I could see only one alternative.
With a soft sigh, I got down on my knees again and started to unlock the door of Helen Maitland’s consulting room.
I’ve slept in a lot less comfortable places than a gynaecologist’s sofa. It was a bit short, even for me, but it was cosy, especially after I’d annexed the cotton cellular blanket from the examination couch and peeled off my latex gloves. I’d locked the door behind me, so I figured I was safe if anyone decided further investigations were necessary. Looking on the bright side, I’d managed to postpone a thrill-packed evening in Garibaldi’s with some spaced-out rock promoter. And I’d used up every last bit of adrenaline in my system. I was too tired now to be scared. As I drifted off to sleep, I had the vague sense that I could hear electronic chirruping in the distance, but I was past caring.
I’d set my mental clock to waken me around nine. It was five to when my eyelids ungummed themselves. Six hours sleep wasn’t enough, but it was as much as I usually squeezed in when I was chasing a handful of cases as packed with incident as my current load seemed to be. I unfolded my cramped body from the sofa and did some languid stretching to loosen my stiffened muscles. I peed in the sink, rinsed it out with paranoid care then splashed water over my face, dumping the used paper towels in the empty bin below. It looked like Helen Maitland
