The deadliest legacy, p.18
The Deadliest Legacy, page 18
Vogel turned to step outside the mortuary, gesturing for Saslow to follow him.
‘You’re not going to believe this, boss, but Delia is insisting on seeing you,’ she began excitedly. ‘Right now.’
‘Good, that’s just what we need,’ commented Vogel levelly.
‘Yes, boss. The medics aren’t too happy, but she’s just swept them aside. She still looks awful, and most of the time I’ve been here, she’s been asleep, or drifting in and out of consciousness, I’m not sure which. Could be medication, I suppose. Anyway, during one of her awake moments, she spotted me. She just stared at me. I said nothing, like you and the charge nurse told me. But then she asked if you were around. So I answered her, didn’t I? I said you were still at the hospital. And she asked me … well, told me really – she’s like that, isn’t she? – to get you to come to see her. Said she wanted to talk to you straight away.’
‘Excellent, well done, Docherty. We’ll be right there,’ said Vogel.
‘You should know, boss, that same nurse is still around – seems her shift’s been extended – and she had a right go at me, said I’d been told not to speak to the patient. But do you know what happened then, boss? Delia Day told her in no uncertain terms to leave me alone, that she needed to see you, she had asked me to arrange it and she wouldn’t have any interference. Sent her packing.’
‘Ah, yes, I can see that happening, Docherty,’ commented Vogel, who could indeed imagine it vividly. ‘Tell Delia I’ll be there in a few minutes, and don’t leave her side until I get there.’
Delia Day had propped herself up on the pillows and was no longer wearing an oxygen mask or connected to any life support machines by the time Vogel arrived at the ICU. Nonetheless, he could see that this was a very different woman from the one he had talked to the previous day.
The attack on her during the night had clearly taken its toll mentally as well as physically. She looked weak to the point of frailty, she was sweating, and there was an air of real anxiety about her.
‘Good morning, Mr Vogel,’ she said, and he thought she was struggling to sound as normal as possible. ‘We meet again.’
‘Indeed, Delia, and under even more distressing circumstances. I am so sorry about what happened.’
‘Yes, well, these things are sent to try us …’
It was a strange remark, under the circumstances. And her voice tailed off. Vogel found that he was quite shocked by her appearance. Her hands were trembling, and she was unnaturally pale. She was still trying to present the same confident front, to maintain her professional persona, the image she liked to show the world. But she wasn’t succeeding that well.
‘I need to thank you for seeing me so quickly after such an awful incident,’ Vogel continued. ‘It’s just so important, because I suspect only you can throw any light on what happened.’
‘I will try, Mr Vogel, but I am puzzled,’ Delia responded.
‘Are you really, Delia?’ persisted Vogel. ‘You have just been attacked at very close quarters. Somebody tried to smother you with a pillow and almost succeeded. You must have seen them fairly clearly, didn’t you?’
‘Well, I had a pillow over my face most of the time.’
‘Yes, of course, but didn’t you see them when they approached your bed before they tried to smother you?’
‘Yes. But they were wearing full PPE, including hood and mask. I wouldn’t have recognized my agent, for God’s sake. I didn’t even register the gender – no idea whether it was a man or a woman.’
Delia had unconsciously echoed the words of the charge nurse. That much about the attack seemed beyond doubt. But it was also completely unhelpful.
‘Do you not have any idea at all who might want to attack you, or why?’
‘No, I don’t, not a clue,’ responded Delia, still trying to maintain a relatively light note. ‘But look, Mr Vogel, I asked your constable to contact you, to get you here to talk to me, because, well, I have to admit it now, don’t I? You were absolutely right last night. I’m in very real danger, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, you are Delia. Quite clearly.’
‘And I spend most of my life playing some sort of particularly silly superwoman, but it’s just an act. And one I certainly can’t keep up at the moment. I’m frightened, Mr Vogel, I have to admit that. Very frightened.’
‘Delia, you’d be stupid not to be frightened. And you are certainly not that.’
Delia managed a small, strained smile.
‘That’s not what the critics say.’
‘But your readers don’t agree, I presume.’
‘No.’
‘And there are many millions of them, are there not?’
‘Yes.’
Vogel had hoped that by allowing the conversation to swing off at a tangent, he would encourage Delia to open up. Instead, she had turned monosyllabic. That would not do at all.
‘I am glad that you seem now to be rather more realistic about the situation you are in, Delia. You see, I feel fairly certain that I need to know why you are being attacked before I can find out who is attacking you. Can you help me with that?’
‘Perhaps, but I’m not entirely sure,’ remarked Delia.
Vogel noticed that she was looking around her. The IC unit, which housed probably eight or ten beds, seemed to be full to capacity. There was a curtain surrounding Delia’s bed, but it was only half closed. A nurse could be seen tending a patient in a bed just a few feet away. Vogel stood nearest to Delia’s bed, studying her closely. Docherty and Saslow, notebook in hand, were standing just behind Vogel.
‘I will try, though,’ Delia continued, perhaps unexpectedly. ‘But I will only talk to you, Mr Vogel. Alone. And off the record.’
Vogel was growing more and more confident that he would soon be heading a murder enquiry. To interview someone at the heart of that enquiry, someone who had very nearly become a murder victim, without another officer as a witness and taking notes, would be highly irregular. As was any suggestion of the interview being off the record. Also, he wasn’t in the habit of making promises he couldn’t keep.
‘Delia, I would like to accommodate you, but we are dealing with a very serious matter here, and what you are asking is totally against police procedure,’ he said. ‘I need at least to have DS Saslow with me. And “off the record” is something you ask journalists to agree to. Not police officers.’
Delia stared at him in silence for a few seconds, the strain of the last few hours showing even more clearly on her face. Her hair was a mess. Her face and arms looked clean, but she had been so far unable to wash her hair since her fall on to the riverbed. Not properly anyway. There seemed to be many more streaks of mud in it than streaks of purple. She looked as if the strength and confidence that were so much a part of the persona she so resolutely adopted had finally left her. But when she spoke again, although her voice remained weaker than usual, it was with more than a flash of her usual assurance.
‘Take it or leave it,’ she said.
Vogel took a moment to consider his options. If he refused Delia’s demands point blank, he was quite sure she would stick to her guns. She would clam up. He doubted he would get another relevant word out of her, however hard he tried. And he remained quite certain that Delia Day held the key to the events of the night and the previous afternoon. He had to break through her front and get this woman talking. But if he accepted her demands as they stood, he could compromise not only his own position but the entire operation. However, he did not consider Delia a suspect in any regard. Initially, it had indeed been remotely possible that she had been responsible in some way for the death of James Harding and had then thrown herself off the quay as a diversionary tactic. But he had never thought that was very likely. She could have been killed, and, indeed, very nearly was. Her fall could also have been both a coincidence and an accident. He’d never thought that was likely, either. Now, following the attempt to suffocate her, there was surely no doubt that Delia was the target of a killer who was unlikely to give up until they had succeeded in doing away with her. Vogel thought that gave him grounds to attempt a compromise. He hoped so, anyway.
‘All right, Delia, I will go along with you – up to a point. I will talk to you alone …’
He paused. Saslow was standing facing him. He was very aware of her disapproving stare.
‘… but there will have to be certain conditions,’ Vogel continued. ‘I am prepared to keep what you tell me in confidence between us, unless and until it becomes imperative for the integrity of this investigation or the safety of anyone involved, including you, to go on the record with it. And I will need to record our conversation, just in case—’
‘No way,’ interrupted Delia. ‘I’m not allowing a recording.’
‘I was going to say just in case you were no longer with us, in case the person who has now tried to kill you twice finally succeeds, and you are dead,’ said Vogel bluntly.
‘Ah,’ said Delia.
‘Ah, indeed. It is perfectly clear that you are in grave danger. It would be irresponsible not to have everything you say to me recorded. But I will keep your confidence if at all possible. You have my word on that, and it may well prove that whatever it is you want to tell me ends up having no bearing on the case. That quite often turns out to be the way, in spite of what those involved think. Please trust me.’
‘Trust you, Detective Chief Inspector? I barely know you and I don’t like your compromise, particularly as it seems to be almost entirely on my side. But I want to stay alive, and it appears that you want to keep me alive, so I suppose I am going to have to trust you.’ She made the comment grudgingly.
‘A wise choice, if I may say so,’ said Vogel.
He waved Docherty and a reluctant Saslow out of the cubicle and pulled the curtains fully closed behind her.
‘OK, Delia,’ he said. ‘We’re as alone as I can make us. So shall we begin?’
‘Come and sit close to me, Mr Vogel,’ she instructed.
He did so, pulling up a chair as close as possible to the top end of Delia’s bed.
‘Under the circumstances, why don’t you call me David?’ he muttered, more than a little awkwardly. ‘It might make things easier.’
Delia smiled faintly. ‘Thank you, David,’ she said.
Vogel then took his phone from his pocket, put it into record mode and placed it on the bedside table.
‘This is DCI David Vogel interviewing Delia Day at the North Devon District Hospital. Delia, would you please confirm that you consent to this interview being recorded?’
Delia remained silent for just a few seconds, but it felt longer. Vogel was afraid that she was about to change her mind.
‘I confirm my consent,’ she said eventually.
‘Thank you,’ said Vogel. ‘Delia, you have indicated that you have something you want to tell me. Perhaps you would like to start now.’
Delia nodded.
‘I am not what you think I am,’ she began in what, for her, was a very small voice. ‘Delia Day is a pseudonym, and her persona is an invention, you see.’
Vogel saw all right, but pseudonyms were common enough among writers, and he had always suspected that living up to some kind of assumed persona was common amongst people who lived in the public eye. Delia seemed to be waiting for him to say something. So he did, telling her more or less exactly what he’d been thinking.
‘Rather more than that in my case,’ she responded. ‘It’s a matter of record that my career began when I was twenty-two years old and I entered a writing competition, which I won. The prize was that the short story I had submitted would be published in a national magazine. Then the magazine asked for another one, and another one. Somebody suggested I should write a novel. I did so and it was taken up by a major publisher and became one of those first-novel sensations. Everything I did seemed to bring instant success. All of that is a matter of record. Every time I appear at a book festival or any kind of event, or just give an interview, this is the story I tell. Almost as if my life began with that competition and its aftermath. With becoming Delia Day. And in a way, it did.
‘But there was a life before Delia Day that I never talk about. A life I am not at all proud of, that I have managed to keep secret. You see, I was in prison when I won that writing competition. Serving a five-year sentence.’
‘Prison?’ Vogel blurted the word out.
‘Yes. And as far as I know, there is nobody alive who knows that. Except you, now, David.’
Vogel had no idea what he might have expected Delia Day to tell him. But not this. Not in a million years.
‘Why were you in prison?’ he asked.
‘I hurt someone, very badly,’ answered Delia quietly. ‘And I am deeply ashamed.’
EIGHTEEN
Vogel was still trying to take this in when the curtains around Delia Day’s bed were wrenched open. An extremely angry-looking doctor approached, accompanied by a nurse who immediately began taking Delia’s temperature, testing her blood pressure and oxygen levels, and so on.
Delia didn’t look pleased. But neither did she protest.
Meanwhile, the doctor rounded on Vogel, who immediately stood up to face him.
‘John Garvey, senior registrar, do you mind telling me who the hell you are and what the hell is going on here?’ he stormed.
‘DCI David Vogel,’ responded Vogel, his voice calm but icy. ‘I am heading an investigation into a suspicious death, and no less than two attempts on the life of your patient. I am conducting a very important interview with Miss Day who I believe to be in possession of vital information pertaining to these three grave incidents.’
Garvey did not appear to have listened. Or, if he had, he took no notice at all of Vogel’s explanation.
‘I can’t believe what’s going on,’ Garvey continued. ‘We don’t pull curtains around beds in ICU unless a doctor or nurse is attending the patient. Nor do we allow police interviews here, except in the most exceptional circumstances, and—’
‘These are exceptional circumstances, Doctor,’ Vogel interrupted, making a real effort to remain calm but sounding even more dangerously icy than before. ‘I have just tried to explain these circumstances to you. I have reason to believe that I am now conducting a murder enquiry.’
Even as he spoke, Vogel regretted his phraseology. Which he feared had summarily lost him the high ground. He had no idea why he’d put it like that.
The doctor picked him up on it at once.
‘Reason to believe you’re conducting a murder enquiry, eh?’ he enquired, still blazing with anger. ‘Well, not in my ICU you’re not. I’m about to re-examine Miss Day, and she may then be moved to a general ward until we see fit to discharge her. Your interview will have to wait until then, I fear.’
Vogel was about to launch into a further and, he hoped, better-presented argument for continuing the interview when Delia chipped in.
‘I asked Mr Vogel to come to see me, Doctor,’ she said. ‘It was my decision.’
‘Not a decision I can allow you to make at the moment, I’m afraid, Miss Day,’ said the doctor. ‘You are in my care, and I will decide what is best for you.’
Delia looked as if she wanted to challenge Garvey on that, as Vogel would expect, but she didn’t seem to have the strength.
Dr Garvey turned to the nurse and asked her what readings she had.
‘Blood pressure one hundred and forty over ninety,’ she replied. ‘Oxygen level ninety-two per cent, temperature thirty-nine point one degrees—’
‘Well, that’s that, then,’ interrupted the doctor. ‘Afraid you won’t be moving out of here for a bit, after all, Miss Day. Those are all unsafe readings. Putting you in danger of a stroke or a heart attack, and quite frankly, either of those is now probably considerably more likely than another attack by some lunatic.’
Vogel reckoned he had no argument left after that. So frustrating, when Delia had been beginning to open up at last.
‘All right, Doctor, of course I wouldn’t want to put Miss Day at any greater risk,’ he said. ‘But please don’t underestimate the danger she is already in from, as you put it, “some lunatic”. There have already been two attempts on her life. Therefore, I must insist on police protection for Miss Day. PC Docherty here will continue to stay with Miss Day for the time being. And that is not negotiable, Doctor.’
Vogel had determined that it was time to assert a little of his own authority. Saslow had followed the doctor into the curtained-off area around Delia’s bed and had been watching Vogel with a certain degree of surprise, he thought. She probably hadn’t expected him to agree so readily to abandon his interview with Delia. Particularly when faced with a tirade from a medical professional on a scale that was likely to infuriate any police officer heading a major investigation. Even the usually mild-mannered Vogel. But the DCI had felt he had no choice. Apart from the more human side of things, it would be totally against the interests of his investigation if Delia were to die. And not only had he picked up a fair bit of medical knowledge over the years, through his work, but there was a history of high blood pressure in his family. Both his maternal grandparents had died of strokes brought on by high blood pressure, in the days before such conditions were monitored and medicated as they are today. This did not affect Vogel directly, as he had been adopted as a boy, but he was very aware of just how suddenly such a condition could kill.
The doctor agreed, albeit with not particularly good grace. Vogel gave Docherty her instructions, and he and Saslow made their way out of the ICU.
Just as they stepped out into the corridor, Vogel received a phone call. It was from Professor Dobbs. Vogel answered it eagerly.
‘Are you still in the hospital?’ she asked.
Vogel confirmed that he was.
‘In that case, would you care to come back to the mortuary? I have some news for you.’
‘Already?’ queried Vogel rhetorically. ‘That was quick!’
‘Yes, well, seems we asked the right questions straight away. Sometimes in life, you get lucky.’
Vogel was beginning to get to know Daisy Dobbs very well. She was as sharp as the needles she used to zip up her cadavers. And he knew that she held young Raoul, he of the specialist knowledge of noxious substances, in extremely high regard. Vogel doubted luck came into it.
