Double Blind by Carrie Bedford

for the kettle to boil for more tea, I gazed out of the window. Rain streamed down the glass, obscuring the view beyond. It was like looking at an aura, everything behind it blurred and hazy.
    I took my cup of tea to the den, thinking about Dr. Reid and Simon Scott. I felt like beating my head against the desk. I knew something bad was going to happen to both of them and I couldn’t think of a single thing that might stop it. My eyes drifted to my mobile. Calling Eliza Chapman again was probably a waste of time but I did it anyway. To my surprise, she answered. I’d prepared what I was going to say and quickly introduced myself.
    “Colin Butler suggested I get in touch with you,” I finished.
    “Ah, Colin,” she said. “And why didn’t the great journalist contact me himself?”
    “He’s tied up with something,” I said. “He sends his apologies but said to let you know he trusts me to talk with you.” I cringed as I embellished the facts, but now I had her on the phone I was anxious to make sure she’d see me.
    “All right,” she said. Her voice had the raspy timbre of a long-time smoker. She gave me an address in Cambridge and suggested I go up that afternoon. I hesitated very briefly. The trip would take several hours, but she was my best link to Simon Scott.
    A couple of hours later, I was on the train, zipping through the northern London suburbs. Soon we were out in the countryside, passing through fields of dark soil and stands of bare-branched trees under ashen skies.
    After buying a cup of tea from the refreshments cart, I used my mobile to do some preliminary research on the woman I was going to interview. Her name had been in the papers a couple of years previously for giving the wrong treatment to a child, which resulted in the suspension of her medical license. That was interesting. I couldn’t wait to meet her. When we reached the station, I grabbed a taxi and soon stood at the door of her shabby semidetached house.
    Eliza Chapman had to be in her late forties, about the same age as Simon Scott, but she looked ten years older. Shoulders slumped under a frayed brown cardigan. Her shoulder-length graying hair was brittle, in need of a conditioner and a good cut, and her face had those deep wrinkles typically incised through years of smoke and alcohol. An overweight tabby cat wound itself around her ankles until she gave it a gentle shove with her foot, causing it to mew loudly and run off down the hall.
    She led me into a small living room that was sparsely furnished, but crowded with books. Shelves along one wall sagged under the weight of them and a stack of hardbacks substituted for a missing leg of the coffee table. The table’s surface was littered with volumes of different colors and sizes, topped with an empty wine glass. She picked up several magazines from the couch and patted the cushion into shape, sending up a cloud of dust.
    “Tea?” she asked. “Or a glass of wine?”
    “Tea, please, if that’s not too much trouble?”
    “Come with me then and we can talk while I make it.”
    I followed her down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. It was cleaner than I’d expected, and compact, with appliances lined up along one wall under a row of white laminate cabinets. Most of the doors were chipped on the corners, the fiberboard underneath showing through. After filling the kettle, Eliza took some teabags from a metal canister with a picture of a cat on it and put them in a brown teapot that didn’t appear to have a lid.
    “So, tell me again why the mighty Colin didn’t come here himself?” she asked. The smell of stale smoke hung around her like a shroud.
    “Do you know Colin personally?” I asked, confused. I knew he’d written an article about her, but she spoke of him more as though she knew him well. He’d mentioned that there was some history now I came to think of it, but he hadn’t elucidated. Then again he hadn’t really explained anything much.
    “He didn’t tell you