Free Truth Dare Kill by Gordon Ferris Page A

the hospital, St Thomas’s, just across Lambeth Bridge from Pimlico. That’s where Kate said she’d been taken. I explained my situation at the desk – a version of it anyway; the old pal act. The receptionist was a bit reluctant at first but when I took off my hat and she saw my scars in all their glory, she became more sympathetic. Maybe I should only make passes at nurses?
    The girl got up and sifted through the drawers of a filing cabinet. “There’s no record of a Major Caldwell or even a Mister Caldwell, around that date, sir. But there’s lots of hospitals around this area. They could have taken him anywhere.”
    “Do you have a record for Miss Kate Graveney, then?”
    She searched again and paused at one file. She turned and looked at me queerly.
    “Did you say the lady was brought in here with injuries from a bomb explosion?”
    “That’s right.”
    She became cagey. “We do have a patient coming around that time. But it doesn’t mention that sort of injury.”
    Around that time? Maybe Kate got her dates muddled. But wasn’t it her birthday?
    “What does it say?”
    The girl shoved the folder back in the cabinet and shut the drawer firmly. “I’m sorry. We can’t talk about patient’s conditions with non-medical staff.” She put her professional shutters up and I could see I’d get nowhere on this tack.
    “Maybe it’s just a misfiling.”
    “Perhaps. These things happen.” Her smile was as bright and diamond-hard as her determination to say nothing more. My scars were getting no more sympathy. I put my hat on and left.
    One thing I learned in Glasgow was never take anything for granted. Check everything. If you can’t see it, smell it or hear it for yourself, it doesn’t exist. It took me two days and a lot of shoe leather to get round the rest of the hospitals in the centre. I began with the Royal and the Brompton in Chelsea.
    I then did a circular sweep that took in King’s in Camberwell, Guy’s at Westminster, over the river to St Bart’s and a big swing round to St Mary’s.
    Nothing. Their records weren’t all they might be and there was a bit of reluctance to tell me anyway.
    Then I decided to change tack. I’d been looking for two hospital admissions, one unhurt, one probably dead. Dead people get recorded at Somerset House. My heart sank at the prospect; there had been a lot business coming their way in the last few years. Nevertheless I slogged my way back up the Strand and joined the queue for a day to get in front of a harassed clerk. I could see the hysteria in his eyes when I asked if I could track down a certain Mr Caldwell thought to have died about a month ago.
    “We’re a bit behind with the filing.” He tugged at his greasy tie. The knot looked like a boy scout had been practising his sheepshanks on a bit of string.
    Knotted once two years ago, slackened off every night and tightened each morning.
    “How far?”
    “You mean how deep?” Definitely a glint of mania.
    “Like that, is it?”
    “We’ve caught up to June,” he said promisingly.
    “I hope you mean June 1945? So, you’ve got a backlog of six or seven months?”
    “We’re in October with births though, and marriages are November.”
    “So if the man I’m trying to trace had been born three months ago you could have found him?”
    He just grinned. I left him to finger his tie. I wondered how long before he’d use it to hang himself. Soon, I hoped. Post-war, and nothing worked. The machine we’d put together to win it had been broken up. All the soldiers back from the front had been offered their old jobs back, but I guess the better ones had lost some of their enthusiasm for the filing department now they’d had a taste of Paris and Rome; red wine and grateful girls.
    This was keeping me fit but getting me nowhere. I holed up in my office and began to wait for either inspiration to strike or the phone to ring with an answer to my message at Caldwell’s club. I made a promise to myself if I heard nothing by the end of the week, I’d phone Kate Graveney and