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  Deadly Practice

  The third Kate Kinsella Medical Mystery

  ‘More medical mayhem for nurse-turned-detective Kate Kinsella and her undertaker side-kick. Great fun – plus a scary showdown with a deranged killer.’ - Daily Telegraph.

  Every small town in the English Midlands needs a nurse and an undertaker. Private eyes and shoe-fetishists are less common.

  In Longborough, Kate Kinsella is the nurse who wants to be a detective; local undertaker (and shoe-fetishist), the ‘gloriously weird’ Hubert Humberstone is her enthusiastic side-kick.

  Christine Green's ‘constantly enjoyable’ Kate Kinsella medical mysteries updated the cosy village ‘whodunit?’ to small town Middle England in the 1990s and spiced her stories with a generous helping of traditional British seaside postcard humour.

  CHRISTINE GREEN was born in Luton but escaped at the age of 17 to train as a nurse in London at the Royal National Ear Nose & Throat and Hampstead General hospitals. She has worked in District Nursing and Health Visiting, as a midwife, a teacher, a youth worker and as a prison visitor. She and her nursing sleuth Kate Kinsella made their debuts in fiction in 1991 with Deadly Errand (also available in Ostara Crime). Since then Christine Green has written fifteen crime novels and two historical novels centred on the famous Coronation Street during the years of World War II. Twice married, with two daughters (both nurses), Christine Green now lives on the Isle of Wight.

  Ostara Crime is a new imprint which aims to collect and republish quality crime writing for new readers. The series editor is Mike Ripley, an award-winning crime writer and editor who was crime fiction critic for the Daily Telegraph and then the Birmingham Post reviewing almost 1,000 crime novels in 18 years. He now writes the Getting Away With Murder column for Shots E-zine on www.shotsmag.co.uk and is also the series editor of Ostara's Top Notch Thrillers imprint.

  Also by Christine Green

  Deadly Errand

  Deadly Admirer

  Deadly Practice

  Christine Green

  Ostara Publishing

  Copyright © 1994 Christine Green

  Ostara Publishing Edition 2012

  The right of Christine Green to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 9781906288778

  A CIP reference is available from the British Library

  Printed and Bound in the United Kingdom

  Ostara Publishing

  13 King Coel Road

  Lexden

  Colchester CO3 9AG

  www.ostarapublishing.co.uk

  My mother and father, sister Gwenda and

  James, who all love books

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Chapter One

  In Longborough during the recession my landlord Hubert Humberstone is the only person doing really well. He's an undertaker.

  As proper shops close, charity shops open on short leases and thrive. Even the video shop has become, grandly, The Re-user's Emporium. It's full of unfashionable frocks which manage to be matronly even in sizes eight and ten, which seems very strange. Anything over a size twelve is even worse and usually looks like curtain material from some bygone age. I take a size fourteen, but then I do have a penchant for jam doughnuts and cream cakes.

  There is now a trend towards bartering and people are recycling almost anything – even tea bags. Payment is often in exchange for goods and services: a few dozen eggs, firewood, a few hours' babysitting, a bit of plumbing. For the funeral business, cash is still the only respectable way to pay. And I should be grateful for that because Hubert hasn't had any rent from me for some weeks.

  On the side door of HUBERT HUMBERSTONE – FUNERAL DIRECTORS, is placed my sign, KATE KINSELLA – MEDICAL AND NURSING INVESTIGATIONS. My parttime nursing subsidized my investigations, the odd night here and there used to pay Hubert's rent. I'm beginning to think I should add ‘Criminal' investigations to my sign; just lately the only enquiries I've had have been from people desperate for hospital beds and treatment. It seems as if nowadays a private investigator really is needed to track down the mysteriously disappearing bed plus medical expertise. The local hospital, Longborough General, is now a Trust. Trust is a funny word; does it mean trust to luck? Anyway I do manage to give my enquirers appropriate telephone numbers, tea and sympathy, and instil into them the notion that it's he who moans loudest and longest who gets the treatment. Those who suffer stoically just get the repeat prescriptions.

  My mother, who now lives in Australia and is trying to find a man with the money of a sheep farmer and an IQ just above a sheep's, said, when I decided to become a nurse, ‘Well, dear, at least you'll never be unemployed.’ She was wrong. I am. I'm doubly unemployed – as a nurse and a private investigator. No one, it seems, can afford either.

  Longborough does now have a job centre. What a misnomer that is. Last week I paid my first visit to claim a job and unemployment benefit. Both, it seems, are riches beyond my grasp. Being an unemployed nurse is one thing, being an unemployed PI quite another. The harassed staff were so pleasant that I began to feel a bit tearful, but they couldn't really help other than give me the forms to fill in.

  I peered at the notice-board. I could choose between cook in a residential home at £2.50 per hour, abattoir worker at £3, trainee estate agent (under twenty-five – I'm just over thirty) no wage specified, or sandwich maker – must be clean and healthy – at £2 per hour. All nursing jobs, private and NHS, seemed to have gone the way of those esoteric financial services jobs – up the Swannee.

  Hubert, I must admit, has been very good about my nonpayment of the rent. He's tall, thin and quite ugly with skin the colour of unrolled pastry but he's kind, although somewhat kinky about feet. He is at the moment going through divorce proceedings, his ex-wife having found a well-heeled scrap metal merchant after years of alimony from Hubert. Although Hubert is a bit depressed, there is a glimmer of hope for him. A new shop assistant seems to have taken a liking to him. As she works in a shoe shop, wears four-inch heels and has good legs this may bode well for a new and successful relationship.

  My love life and social life are like work – non-existent. I do have my own small terraced cottage in the village of Farley Wood plus the office and box-room I rent from Hubert. Just lately though I've spent less and less time at the office and more and more time at home. More time watching morning television. I realized the other day I was actually beginning to enjoy the programmes. That really scared me. Now I go to the job centre each morning where I'm getting quite well known. I then visit the local library, plus I also ring my friend Pauline Berkerly, who runs a Nursing Agency. She's as worried as I am about the lack of nursing jobs and I suspect she's finding making a living tough too.

  This morning Hubert did make me a proposition. One of his part-time assistants was off sick – would I like to prepare the corpses for burial. No I would not. He stomped downstairs but came back to my
office a little later.

  I was staring out of the window at the High Street bathed in May sunshine. I'd turned my office chair to face the sun, and put my feet on the window-sill, and I was almost in Bermuda …

  He didn't even bother to knock, just came right in. I could sense him behind me, just standing there.

  ‘Just because I'm unemployed, Hubert, doesn't mean I don't need some consideration.’

  Silence.

  ‘You're getting to be a miserable old bag just lately, Kate. You're not the only one unemployed.’

  ‘I know, Hubert,’ I said swinging round in the chair, ‘but worrying about the three million others will make me feel even worse.’

  ‘I've bought you the local paper,’ he said. ‘There's something in the stop press.’

  ‘Don't tell me – let me guess. Uprising in the dog pound or mystery of neutered cats …’

  ‘Very funny, Kate,’ said Hubert, not amused in the least. The Longborough Echo seldom carries anything remotely interesting in the way of new stories. Dogs, cats, flower shows and the odd burglary forms most of its copy and it gets thinner by the day. ‘Do you want to know or not?’

  ‘Fire away, Hubert. Shock me.’

  Hubert looked upwards mournfully then lowered his eyes and began reading. ‘Woman's body found in boot of burnt-out car. Thought to be that of nurse Jenny Martin, 34, from Dunsmore.’

  ‘Yes, Hubert?’ I said, meaning I was totally mystified. He didn't answer, as if merely waiting for the penny to drop. Finally I said, ‘Oh, you mean the local CID might want me to rush over there and give them the benefit of my two-case experience. Anyway just because nurses in dire trouble seem to be my forte doesn't mean I wouldn't like a change.’

  He shook his head. ‘You call yourself Medical and Nursing Investigations, Kate, so what do you expect – stevedores?’

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Now that could be interesting. Big muscly men in vests with hairy chests and arms – I might meet the man of my dreams.’

  ‘I thought you were a confirmed spinster Kate,’ said Hubert, trying to wind me up. I didn't answer so he carried on, ‘No doubt there's someone out there who would find your red hair and cheeky face attractive.’

  ‘Thank you, Hubert.’

  ‘I was going to add … but he could be in the Sahara Desert.’ I managed to smile. ‘That's better,’ said Hubert. ‘Now back to the stop press. This could be a job for you.’

  ‘As PI?’

  ‘No. She's a dead nurse … So there might be a job going.’

  I laughed. ‘That's a bit tenuous, Hubert. She might not have been working.’

  ‘Ah, but she was. I heard she was the practice nurse over at Riverview Medical Centre in Dunsmore. They'll need a replacement.’

  ‘Dunsmore is twelve miles away,’ I answered plaintively.

  ‘You drive,’ said Hubert, ‘so don't whinge.’

  ‘I'm not whingeing. Why should they employ me, anyway? I've had no experience as a practice nurse.’

  ‘Don't be defeated before you even start. You can give injections and bandage bits and pieces.’

  ‘There's more to it than that, Hubert.’

  ‘You'll have to take yourself off to the library, then, and make yourself an expert.’

  He went back downstairs to do whatever undertakers do when they're not actually at funerals and I daydreamed for a while. Not about being a practice nurse but about being called in to help with the case. Called in by whom, that was the question. Private investigators are not viewed kindly by the police, especially young female ones (relatively young anyway), and to the more senior members of Longborough CID I am most definitely persona non grata.

  Poor Jenny Martin. I wondered how she'd died. Was she married? Where did she die? Perhaps tomorrow's Echo would have more details. Naturally nosy though, and bored to tears, I decided not to wait. I'd drive out to Dunsmore and see what I could find out by a process of lies and deceit. This may not work for normal law-abiding people but seems to work well for newspaper reporters and private investigators.

  On my way out I called in at Hubert's rather splendid office. ‘I'm off home,’ I said, ‘not much point in hanging around.’

  He looked a bit disappointed. ‘You never know, you could miss a big case by not being in your office at the right time.’

  ‘And then again I might just find a piece of the action in the big world outside this grim place.’

  Anxiety flickered in his brown eyes.

  ‘It's not that grim, is it?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I don't see it like others see it. This is my home.’

  I smiled. ‘Sorry, Hubert, I didn't mean to upset you. My staircase is a bit grim, but I quite like all that purply gothic atmospheric stuff.’

  ‘You're winding me up.’

  ‘Just paying you back, Hubert.’

  His face crinkled a bit, halfway between a smile and a grimace.

  ‘Hubert,’ I said, ‘as a funeral directors' this establishment does, in my humble opinion, provide a sympathetic, splendid service. You manage that air of gravitas without being unctuous.’

  ‘You've been studying the Reader's Digest again, Kate. Doing the word-power page.’

  ‘You buy it, Hubert.’

  He shrugged. ‘See you in the morning?’

  ‘At the crack.’

  As I opened his office door to leave I couldn't resist asking, ‘How's Dolly Two-Shoes?’

  He scowled. ‘It's Dorothy Tweedle, as you well know. And she's fine. I'm taking her out to dinner tonight to the Grand.’

  ‘Just you behave yourself then,’ I said as I closed the door. I could still hear his retort, though. ‘You just wait, Kate Kinsella – one day you'll fall in love again.’ ‘Not if I can help it,’ I muttered. But what really worried me was Dolly Two-Shoes – was she good enough for Hubert? Was she after his money or his body? Even more worrying was that it might not be either. Perhaps she was just a shoe exhibitionist, if there is such a thing.

  Driving to Dunsmore in my clapped-out purple-sprayed car I tried to dwell not on Hubert's problems but on exactly how I was going to find out more about Jenny Martin. First I had to find out where she lived. Once more the public library would be the best place to start. There I would be able to get the council tax listings and from the telephone directory her phone number. That is of course if the library was open.

  Dunsmore was not aptly named – it couldn't have done less. It was a dull, dreary market town that had been pedestrianized, no doubt to keep people from driving straight through. It was a defeated sort of place, empty or closed shops lining the precinct. It did, however have a rather splendid spired church, flanked by lawns and flower-beds. And it did have free parking.

  I found the library quite easily just off the High Street, as grimly Victorian on the outside it was as grim inside. The dark green paintwork in the entrance, the stone floors and smell of disinfectant that seemed to emanate from both reminded me of a public lavatory. There were two available librarians, one, middleaged, well scrubbed and dressed in navy blouse, navy jumper, navy skirt, only needed a toggle to be an akela in charge of a pack of cub scouts. The other wore a long floral skirt and a white lacy blouse, with a small purse slung at waist level from her shoulder. I presumed this was to deter muggers with scissors at the ready. She, in particular, had a wary pinched look but they both eyed me somewhat suspiciously when I asked to see the council tax register. I smiled a lot and said I was desperate to find an old school friend who I was sure was living in the area.

  I was directed to a table by Akela who seemed very pleasant to her regular borrowers and was frequently approached by elderly people requesting help to find them a ‘good read'.

  I found the Martins in the register. There were six. I quickly copied down the addresses. Then I searched the telephone directory. There were five. I couldn't be so crass as to telephone and ask for Jenny so I'd have to think of another strategy. As I sat there wondering quite what to do, I remembered I wasn't on an investig
ation, well not a paid one, and I really couldn't afford to satisfy my curiosity at the expense of missing out on a possible job. I could, if I had the brass neck, simply find Riverview Medical Centre and ask for poor Jenny's job. Did I have that sort of courage, though? Of course I did. They could only say no.

  Undoubtedly there would be a practice manager to deal with. They're usually a fearsome breed who hold a Chancellor of the Exchequer's power, especially when the GPs are budget holders. Why GPs should be expected not only to take responsibility for the sick but also have to find the cheapest treatment and then compete for that treatment is beyond me. It all seems so devilishly cunning.

  Akela informed me Riverview Medical Centre was on the outskirts of town. Or to be exact, ‘Go out of here, turn right, past two small roundabouts, collect car,’ she smiled as she said that, ‘drive for about one hundred yards, sharp right, carry straight on, then take the fourth left, then second right. It's a fairly new estate – Riverview Medical Centre is at the bottom of Riverview Lane.’

  Confused I certainly was, but I didn't want to appear stupid so I thanked her and left hurriedly. As I walked away from the library I tried hard to remember the directions. I hadn't really concentrated properly, I'd been too busy being mesmerized by the woman's flaring nostrils and the soft breathless quality of her voice. Anyway, I did remember to turn right and pass the two roundabouts which would at least return me to the car park.

  On the way to the medical centre I tried to concentrate on actually finding my way but I also had to formulate some sort of opening for applying for a job that hadn't been advertised and might not really exist. Then I remembered I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. The jeans were at least black. Did I in fact look like practice nurse material? Would my car be seen? Was this down at heel approach one they wanted to foster?