Sometimes People Die by Simon Stephenson

Author:Simon Stephenson [Stephenson, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2022-07-12T17:00:00+00:00

25

Over the course of the next two weeks we were all interviewed under oath at Highbury police station. A few of my colleagues took union reps with them, and a couple even brought lawyers, but I did neither. I was not in the union, did not have another two hundred and twenty five pounds to spare, and anyway I had done far better without a lawyer.

The interview was held in the same room, but it had been updated with new furniture and voice-activated video recording equipment. DS Newington described this makeover as a ‘perk’ of having a big inquiry. It seemed to perhaps be the only one, because she looked weary, and Afferson himself seemed almost broken. I supposed I might have been that way too, if I had found myself in charge of a high profile and potentially career-making case that I could not solve.

Still, Afferson’s questions to me were another surprise. He began by asking me if I had managed to stay off the pethidine; for a moment I wondered if he was about to produce a sheaf of incriminating discharge prescriptions. Thankfully he did not, and I reassured him I had indeed managed to keep off it. That seemed to placate him, because he then apologized that he understood it might be upsetting, but he was now going to have to ask me about George. Specifically, they had noticed the extra needle marks around his vein, and wanted to know if I thought they signified the involvement of somebody else in George’s death.

I can only guess that they imagined an unidentified assailant had somehow overpowered George, taken several attempts to find a vein, and then injected him with enough potassium chloride to kill him; they also seemed to believe the attacker had done this in the middle of a busy car park, without being seen or heard. I told them that was ridiculous: a determined ninety-year-old woman can stop you from ever hitting a vein, and George was a hulking rugby player. If he had wanted to stop someone injecting him, he could have certainly done so. I reassured them that three failed attempts to find the easiest vein in the body made it almost certainly the handiwork of an orthopod.

I’d thought that would be the end of the questions about George, but the detectives then asked me if I had noticed anything strange about his behaviour. I began to explain that I had not, but that was not so unusual. I was telling them how doctors actually kill themselves more than most other professions, when Newington interrupted.

‘Anaesthetists and psychiatrists, yes, we know that. But that is not what we are asking here.’

There was something unexpected in her tone, and I looked at Afferson.

‘What we are seeking to establish’, he said, ‘is whether there is any way your late friend George might have been our killer?’

I don’t think I actually laughed out loud, but the expression on my face must have been the next best thing. Certainly, the looks on Afferson’s and Newington’s faces showed that they believed I had insulted them.

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