"D.I. Fitzwilliam. And you are?" He stared stonily at the young doctor facing him. His expression remained unchanged as he finished the question and waited for an answer. He raised an eyebrow quizzically when the question wasn't answered with the immediacy he was used to in the force. He heard a vague mumbled reply.
"You're going to have to speak up lad, if you're gonna get yourself off the hook with me." He quipped, the tone of his voice sounding much lighter than he intended. He was face to face with the man who, in his eyes, was their prime suspect for the murder of Connie Beauchamp.
"Will Curtis" the doctor replied, raising his head to make eye contact with the formidable inspector he had been previously dreading. He took in the greying hair, the hard eyes boring right back at him. He would rather be friends than enemies with this man, he made the snap decision. Standing up, he thrust his right hand forwards in a gesture of peace offering. Clark looked back dubiously before extending his own right hand and grasping Will's tightly. He wasn't prepared to be friendly yet so scaring him with the brute strength he had would have to suffice.
Clark retreated his hand and set back down, waiting for Will to take the hint and be seated also. Finally Will sat down opposite Clark, a young uniformed officer beside him to sit in on the informal interview.
"So" Clark drawled, the hints of his native Yorkshire dialect creeping into his voice, "You're boss-less. Must be nice… eh?"
Will shook his head briefly, "Not really, Mrs Beauchamp was a good boss most of the time, she did a lot for my career, it's a…" he searched for the most appropriate word, evidently not finding it as he carried on, "Well not a shame, but you know what I'm getting at. She didn't deserve to be killed like that."
Clark picked up on his somewhat inappropriate choice of phrasing. "Like that; like what exactly Dr Curtis?"
"It's Mr Curtis, I'm not known as 'Dr' since I qualified as a surgeon. I meant more that she didn't deserve to be murdered, rather than the exact way she died, I don't know exactly how she died." He fumbled with the cuffs of his jacket, tracing around the small gold cufflinks, engraved with his initials. "She was a good boss, she was fair and she never did anything but her best for the patients and the staff. She may have come across as a slave-driver and power-crazed but she never once while I worked with her, lost sight of why we do this job. It was all about the patients to Connie."
Clark noted the use of Connie's first name, Will's discomfort as he implied he was involved. It was obvious there was more than met the eye to Will and Connie's working relationship.
"How well did you know Mrs Beauchamp? I mean, outside the job. You friends?"
"I wouldn't say we were friends, nothing especially close, but I wouldn't have ignored her out of work. We didn't make an effort to socialise particularly, but inevitably we went to some of the same functions. I'm not big on social events but the ward Christmas party we both attended, a colleagues 50th birthday party recently, we were both at. Nothing out of the ordinary."
He finished his speech and took a deep gulp of air. Clark noted the two parties down in his notebook. Do you have dates for the two events you mentioned, I'd like to check everything out, just so I can be sure I haven't missed anything crucial, even the tiniest detail might help up catch whoever did this to your boss."
Will stuttered, casting his eyes to the ceiling of the staffroom the police were using to speak to each member of the ward staff. Splaying his hands, he shrugged his broad shoulders.
"Christmas party was the weekend before Christmas last year, I'd have to check for the exact date but it was the Tuesday night, the whole ward tends to work the same shifts usually so we had it when we were all free which is usually a Tuesday night. From memory it was the 22nd of December I think. And Ric's party was mid-September, again I'd have to check the exact date, I'm no good with birthdays. It wasn't a big event, just the people he works with mainly. Again from memory it was a Tuesday night, possibly the second Tuesday of the month. Its six months ago now and it didn't seem like a big deal at the time, I can't remember the exact date."
Clark nodded and jotted down the vague dates Will had given him, making a note to get either Kadie or Lois to check them out with the other members of staff and with Connie' diary from last year.
"Your wife go with you did she?" he asked nonchalantly, not expecting the answer he got.
"No. She doesn't… didn't like Connie much. She thought Connie worked me too hard and never let me have time to myself. It's hard with me coming from the army when she only ever saw me for a few weeks a year but when she had me home, I was there constantly. To go to being at home permanently but usually on-call or on the ward was difficult. I think she expected to see me a lot more than she does. She resented my job and everything which came with it, including Connie, purely because Connie sees… Saw more of me than she did."
Clark nodded, suppressing a knowing laugh. "Nothing like wedded bliss eh? Know how you feel, got a wife like that at home myself. She's not too bothered about me working with Lois though. You ever give the wife something to worry about?"
Will blushed. "No of course not!" he lied, the flush of his cheeks telling an entirely different tale to his words.
"This is a murder investigation Mr Curtis; I shouldn't have to remind you of that. We need to know if there have been problems, if only to eliminate you from our enquiries. We can't have skeletons in closets only for them to topple out and make you look like a murderer." Clark chuckled a moment at his own joke and then set his face back into professional mode, his face now unsmiling and serious.
"I know, I know." Will replied, exasperated and reluctant to tell the inspector about his brief dalliance with his boss, his very married boss. He widened his eyes as he began to speak, his voice hushed as he did so.
"This won't… well you won't spread this will you? No of course not, you're a police officer. And this is confidential yes?" he looked at the officer next to him for reassurance before carrying on with his confession. "We, well nothing happened really…" he emphasised the final word, stressing it to Clark.
"It was at Ric's 50th birthday party, I mentioned it earlier." He paused to run his fingers through his short brown hair. "We had a bit to drink, we we'd had a good day at work, saved a patient we didn't think we could, it was a bit of a celebration. SO yeah, we shared a bottle or two, got a bit close. But nothing more happened. We kissed; she didn't want to take it any further so that was that."
Clark noted it all down, the look of annoyance on Will's face; he would have put money on the fact that Will wasn't happy with her upping and leaving him after being so intimate. He was in love with her and she didn't know it.
"You were in love with her weren't you Mr Curtis?" he said quietly, looking up at Will but not moving his head from the downward gaze. He saw Will's jaw drop before he could regain his composure.
"I… err. No, of course not. I'm married. We just had too much to drink." But again, his blush gave the game away.
"Thank you Mr Curtis, that's all for now. But don't go leaving the country. We might think you've got something to hide." Clark added snidely, standing up and opening the door for Will to leave.
As he watched Will's back down the corridor towards the men's locker room he turned to the officer still in the room and smiled.
"Motive the size of a house brick."
