‘What next, guv?’ she asked.
‘Where can I drop you?’ I asked.
‘No, no, no,’ Beverley said quickly. ‘Mum says I was to facilitate.’
‘You’ve facilitated,’ I said. ‘You can go home now.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said. ‘Mum’s got the whole entourage round, Ty and Effra and Fleet, not to mention all the old ladies. You don’t know what it’s like.’
Actually I knew exactly what it was like, but I wasn’t going to tell Beverley that.
‘Come on, I’ll be good,’ she said, giving me the big eyes. ‘I’ll let you borrow my phone.’
I gave in before she escalated to the trembling lip. ‘But you have to do what I say.’
‘Yes guv,’ she said, and saluted.
You can’t do an obbo in a vintage Jag, so, much to Beverley’s disappointment, we drove back to the Folly to swap it for the ex-Panda. The Folly’s garage is out the back of the building and takes up the entire bottom floor of the converted coach house. From the mews you can see where the original doors, wide and high enough to accept a coach and four, had been bricked in and replaced with a more modest sliding door. The Jag and the ex-Panda rattled around inside a space big enough for four carriages.
Unlike the entrance hall, the coach house didn’t seem to bother Beverley at all. ‘What happened to the inimical magic force fields?’ I asked.
‘Not in here,’ she said. ‘Bit of protection on the garage door and that’s it.’
Nightingale had left the building, but Molly met me in the lobby with a Tesco’s carrier bag full of sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper and tied up with string. I didn’t ask what was in them but I doubted it was chicken tikka masala. Back in the coach house, I threw my bag and sandwiches in the back of the ex-Panda, made sure Beverley had her seat belt on and headed off to harass a junior doctor.
Dr Framline lived in a two-storey Victorian terrace off the Romford Road in Newham. It was further east than I like to go but not a bad neighbourhood. I found a parking space with decent sightlines of the front door and got out – I knew no force on earth was going to keep Beverley in the car, so I let her come with me on the strict understanding that she’d keep her mouth shut.
There was only one doorbell and the small front garden was given over to gravel, the dustbins and a couple of empty, bright red plant pots. I was thinking that either Dr Framline owned the whole place or he was sharing with friends. I pressed the bell and a cheerful voice said it was on its way. The voice belonged to a plump, round-faced woman of the sort that develops a good personality because the alternative is suicide.
I showed her my warrant card. ‘Good afternoon. My name’s Peter Grant, I’m from the police and this is my colleague Beverley Brook, who’s a river in south London.’ You can get away with stuff like that with civilians because their brains lock in place on the word ‘police’。
Actually I think I may have overdone it because the woman frowned at Beverley and asked, ‘Did you just say she was a river?’ Which is why you should never show off when on duty.
‘It’s an office joke,’ I said.
‘She seems a bit young to be police,’ said the woman.
‘She’s not,’ I said. ‘She’s on work experience.’
‘Can I see your identification again?’ asked the woman.
I sighed and handed it over. Beverley sniggered.
‘I can give you the number of my superior if you like,’ I said. This normally does the trick, since members of the public are generally lazier than they are suspicious.
‘Are you here about what happened at the hospital?’ asked the woman.
‘Yes,’ I said, relieved. ‘That’s exactly why we’re here.’
‘Only Eric’s gone into town,’ she said. ‘You just missed him; he went fifteen minutes ago.’
Of course he has, I thought, no doubt to some spot less then five hundred metres from where Beverley and I started out. ‘Do you know where he was going?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘We think we have a line on the man who attacked him,’ I said. ‘We just need him to confirm a few details. If we do this quickly we may be able to make an arrest tonight.’
That perked her up, and got me not just the name of the gastropub Dr Framline was heading for but also his mobile number. Beverley had to trot to keep up with me as we headed back to the car.