A Body in the Lakes by Graham Smith (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

money worries? Do you know who their friends are? Their enemies? We may well be wrong in our assumption, but to honour the victim, you understand that, don’t you, we have to pursue every line of enquiry, however unlikely it may seem?’

Ms Chisholm leaned back into her chair. Her expression didn’t give much away, but Beth could tell her words had had the desired effect. The head of the admin department was now deep in thought and a little cowed.

Beth turned to the doctor. ‘I’ll need a full list of the nurses and doctors who would have had access to Felicia Evans’s file. I’d also be grateful if you could include the information for any cleaning and janitorial staff who might have had contact with Ms Evans.’ She had a thought. ‘If you could get me the names of the staff who were on duty throughout last Sunday night and Monday morning, that would be very useful.’

‘That’s when she was murdered, wasn’t it? You want to know who was working so you can rule them out of your investigation, do you?’

‘You’re very perceptive.’ Beth’s attempt at flattery bounced off Ms Chisholm without having any effect. ‘I’m guessing that the admin team you oversee are pretty much nine-to-fivers. I’ll need to have the names of everyone who could have accessed Ms Evans’s file, regardless of whether or not they’re connected to the Oncology department.’

‘I’ll get you what you need.’ A vicious twinkle filled Ms Chisholm’s eyes. ‘You’ll have your work cut out though. There are more than two hundred administration staff across the hospital and any of them can log into the computer and look up a patient. None of them should access a patient’s confidential medical records unless it’s to do with their job, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.’

‘Really?’ Beth couldn’t hide the dismay in her voice. She had expected that there may be up to a dozen admin staff involved in Oncology; two hundred was a hell of a lot of people to run checks on and possibly interview.

‘I’m afraid that there’ll be at least two or three dozen medical staff to add to your list as well, plus the same again for cleaning, welfare and janitorial who may have met Mrs Evans as they went about their jobs.’

Beth tried not to let her frustration at this turn of events show in her face. Looking into the best part of three hundred people would take for ever. The supposed help they were promised had never arrived and now they were after someone who was getting more direct with their methods. If O’Dowd was right and the person who’d killed Forster had other scores to settle, there might be other people in the killer’s sights.

A thought jolted her from her doldrums. It was one she felt she should have had earlier, but she’d been distracted by the idea of investigating hundreds of people.

Beth turned to Ms Chisholm. ‘The software that you use to manage patient files, does it show who has accessed particular files?’

‘Yes, it can.’

The curtness of the woman’s reply informed Beth that Ms Chisholm had thought of this herself but had deigned to hold the information back.

‘Good, I’d like you to get me the names, addresses and national insurance numbers of everyone who accessed Ms Evans’s records before she was brutally murdered.’

Ms Chisholm didn’t move until the doctor asked her to go and bring the information. Her reluctance made Beth wonder if she’d find the woman’s name in the log. It wouldn’t be a surprise to her to learn Ms Chisholm made random checks of files to see if details were being fed in properly.

As much as she disliked Ms Chisholm, Beth felt the woman would favour acerbic put-downs to murder when she was crossed.

‘I take it that I’m on your list of suspects as well?’ The doctor’s genial tone suggested he wasn’t in the least bit worried about being a murder suspect.

‘Everyone is a suspect until we can rule them out.’

‘Fair enough.’ The doctor gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘I was working last Sunday night. You probably won’t take my word for it, but the staff rotas will show I was here from three on Sunday afternoon until three on Monday morning. One of my patients had a bad turn after surgery and I had to oversee their care.’

Beth chatted with the doctor until Ms Chisholm came back and handed over a collection of printouts. ‘Here you go. This is the full list of all those who accessed Ms Evans’s file and their details. We have had some IT issues of late, but I think they’re accurate.’

‘Thanks.’ Beth flicked through a couple of the printouts as an idea came to her. ‘You say you’ve had IT issues, who looks after your IT systems? Is it a local company, or is there a national one which looks after lots of hospitals?’

‘We have our own experts. The hospital trust felt it was more economical to hire our own rather than outsource the work.’

‘Okay. Do you think you can get me their details as well, please?’

Ms Chisholm tapped the printouts. ‘Already done.’

Seventy-Six

Beth’s fingers danced across the keyboard without missing a step. After leaving the hospital she’d got the same type of information from the company who managed the community care and had come back to Carleton Hall so she could check out everyone.

The first thing she’d done was write the name ‘Doug’ beneath Unthank’s scrawled ‘what do you call a man holding a spade?’ on the whiteboard.

Despite there being more than a hundred names on her list, she’d chopped the list down to thirty by – at least initially – excluding the women. While it was possible the killer was a woman, statistics showed that women rarely killed in cold blood. The murders they committed were in self-defence, or maybe they’d stab their husband with a carving knife after enduring years of abuse.

Had it not been for the sexual element of the attack on Felicia, Beth wouldn’t have