‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said.
‘That’s what?’ Lawson replied.
‘I can’t find any discrepancies.’
‘Did you expect to?’
‘It’s our job to check it out.’
‘It’s also part of our job to use our brains. If I was a killer nurse trying to filch drugs, I’d take them from someone who had died. I’d pretend to have passed them over for destruction, and I’d doctor the paperwork to make it look as though that had happened.’
‘That’s why we need to check the paperwork at the other end.’ Wilson felt irritated with Lawson. He wasn’t so dumb this hadn’t occurred to him. It was just that he believed in being methodical. ‘And that is what I intend to do,’ he continued quickly, before Lawson could butt in. ‘Go to Oxford Waste and check that the paperwork at their end ties up with the paperwork here.’
‘So you don’t need me for that?’ Lawson felt there were more interesting ways to pursue the case.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Normally Wilson enjoyed working alongside Lawson. But not today. ‘But we’ll need to check it out with the guv.’
Lawson made a noise that might well have been a snort. ‘Don’t you worry your little head, Constable. I’ll go and find her now, bring her up to date, and tell her where you’ve gone.’
Somewhere deep inside, Wilson’s slow-to-flare temper ignited. ‘Where did you learn to patronize, Constable? At your father’s knee?’
Lawson felt a sudden nip of shame, a sense of having done wrong. That was certainly something she’d learnt from her father. ‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly. She considered saying more, but she could hear footsteps approaching along the corridor, and that was all the excuse she needed. ‘See you later,’ she said, as she opened the door wide.
Two corridors away, in the staff room, Paul Greenleaf had just sat down opposite DI Holden. She had wanted to interview him again first thing that morning, but there had been a crisis with one of the patients, and Greenleaf had insisted he needed to attend to that first. Holden wasn’t sure why, when Fran Sinclair was there and Dr Featherstone had been summoned, but she knew it would have been churlish of her to insist he put police inquiries before the welfare of his patients, and so she had agreed to wait.
‘How is Mr Osbourne?’ Holden tried to sound concerned. At least she had remembered his name.
‘We think he’ll be OK, thank you.’
‘Good.’
‘What was it you wanted to ask me about?’ Greenleaf leant back in his chair, as if suddenly he had all the time in the world.
‘How long has Jim Wright been working here?’
‘Jim?’ He paused, running his two hands expansively through his long hair. ‘He just does odd jobs for me from time to time.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘Hmm!’ Again there was a delay. Greenleaf sucked in a breath of air and then expelled it. ‘He did one or two small jobs for me in the summer, and then I got him in to help with some redecorating and general maintenance a few weeks ago.’
‘Why him?’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s a hundred and one odd-job men out there, Mr Greenleaf. How come you hired the son of one of your patients?’
Greenleaf lifted his hands theatrically. ‘For that very reason. I met him when he came to look at Sunnymede for his mother. He told me he was a builder. I suppose I must have filed him away in the back of my head. We have our own odd-job man on staff – Roy Hillerby – but he has so many different things to do that when we had a couple of rooms that needed some serious work, I realized he’d need help. So I approached Jim.’
Holden nodded. It all added up, just about, but she wasn’t completely convinced. ‘Who did you use before Jim Wright came along?’
‘A man called Alan Moore. But he’s got asbestosis.’
‘Why did you trust Jim Wright? If you’d done any checking around, you’d have discovered his business hit the rocks not so long ago.’
‘Christ, what sort of woman are you, Inspector?’ There was a sudden surge of anger. ‘Do you write people off just because they get into financial trouble? Anyway, there was never going to be a risk to Sunnymede. We pay him, not the other way round, and we only pay him when the work is complete. In addition, given his situation, his rates are very competitive. And when you’re on a tight budget, as we are, that’s important.’
Holden was pleased at the response she had provoked. She didn’t care what Greenleaf thought of her. What mattered was to try and get information out of him, and to probe his account for inconsistencies. And if getting him riled helped, then so be it. ‘So he’s been in a lot recently, has he? And visiting his mother too, no doubt, like the dutiful son.’