by Sam Speed
'I could tell him I met you on your way to the station and you handed me the notebook,' said Wendy. 'That should give you a gold star as well as me.'
'I doubt it. I told him I had no idea where her paperwork was. I'd have to make up an excuse about helping sort her stuff and coming across it.'
'Not so far from the truth,' said Wendy with a wink.
'I still don't like the idea of giving it to him,' said Jean. 'Can't we keep it for a few weeks first? After all, he wouldn't have shared it with Wendy, never mind the rest of us.'
'If he ever found out it could cost me my job,' said Wendy.
Jean still didn't look convinced but I wouldn't risk Wendy getting into trouble. So, after scanning the notebook, I handed it over to Wendy.
'I'd better get off with this,' said Wendy and left clutching her prize.
'I can't believe Yvette would do something like this,' said Dawn. 'There must be an innocent answer.'
My poor naive Dawn.
'Yvette was the nosiest person I know,' I said. 'She used to sit with her blinds half way open in the dark and watch everything that happened in the street.'
Jean laughed.
'There was a nosy old git like that in my street,' she said. 'He thought no-one could see him watching but you could see him in the flicker of light from his TV.
'Eww that's creepy,' said Dawn with a shiver.
'He had a tiny patch of grass in his front garden with a minute border of soil that never saw a plant. Every dry day he'd be out there pretending to cut the grass or hoeing the empty border. Of course, it was just an excuse to watch what was going on. When it was wet he would stand behind his blinds with the window open so he could hear what people were saying.
To a stranger, he seemed like a lonely old man. But, like Yvette, he had a knack of leeching information from people before they even knew what they were saying. It would have been funny if he hadn't been so malicious. He would twist gossip around and spread all sorts of lies and venomous drivel. New residents would barely have moved in before he would be there turning them against their other neighbours.
It's not like he lived on his own. His daughter a dumpy brunette stayed with him. She was completely weird and would jump about in the middle of the road shouting out about people taking her photo. As if anyone would want to.
His son was a nasty piece of work as well, not long out of prison. He didn't stay there, but the police were convinced the old git was passing information to him to use for possible break-ins.
Eventually, one night when he was wandering around the houses staring in the windows, a neighbour was so sick of his crap, they beat him up. Maybe the same sort of thing happened with Yvette.'
'Sounds like he deserved it,' I said.
'He does sound like a nasty piece of work,' said Dawn, 'but violence is never the answer.'
Dear sweet naive Dawn.
I printed out a copy of the notebook and we each took some pages to look at.
'I'll bet nearly everyone Yvette came across is in her book,' I said.
'Except for us,' said Dawn.
'Really?' I said having a quick look, 'I'm insulted. She didn't even bother to dig up any dirt on me.'
Dawn creased her forehead and Jean laughed.
'Oh I thought you were serious,' said Dawn.
You'd think she'd know me better than that by now.
'We may be in there some where but there are so many people.'
'Some of these initials must be people she worked with,' said Jean. 'We should make a note of any we don't recognise and see if we can find people with those initials when we go to the call centre.'
'So meantime we try and figure out who she was blackmailing in Nu Faran and why,' said Dawn.
Not such a bad idea. We could try to decipher her cryptic notes.
Jean lifted the pages with the blackmail payments in them.
'MC?' she said, 'We thought that was Mary Campbell.'
'We know Mary backed over Yvette's cat,' I said, 'but Yvette would hardly be sending her lawyers letters and blackmailing her.'
'Let's check what Yvette says in the notes,' Jean said.
Dawn rifled through the pages with the cryptic notes until she came to Mary's initials.
'It says. Monday morning strong smell. Thinks no-one notices.'
'Strong smell of what?'
Innocence shone through Dawn's amber eyes but Jean and I exchanged a glance and chorused.
'Vodka.'
'Normally I avoid Mary,' I said, 'she's so boring. But when I spoke to her about Dawn's class I did think there was a smell of alcohol. At the time I put it down to the combination of delightful baby smells and possibly Mary's daughter using meths to clean the baby's cord. There are people who still do that.'
'What if she had been drinking when she knocked down Yvette's cat?' said Dawn.
'I'd have thought Yvette would have delighted in calling the police out to Mary,' I said. 'But I suppose the police wouldn't have bothered. It would take them days to even turn up.'
'You'd better not say that in front of Wendy,' said Jean.
'I suppose Yvette might have preferred to blackmail Mary instead. But then why send out a lawyer's letter?'
'That could have been a while ago,' said Jean, 'and Yvette gave up because it would cost her money for a lawyer. Maybe she decided to blackmail Mary instead. That could even have been how she started. If only we knew when Mary got the letter.'
'I know,' said Dawn.
Jean and I looked at each other in surprise.
Dawn looked through the box of Yvette's papers and produced a carbon copy of the lawyer's letter.
'Of course,' said Jean, 'I remember noticing it but not paying attention because we already knew about it.'
Dawn looked at the letter and said, 'It's dated the 6th of July.'
So much for that idea.
Jean looked over Dawn's shoulder and gave the half smile she did when trying not to laugh.
'It's the 6th of July two years ago,' she said.
'So that's Mary back in the picture as a suspect,' I said.
'Along with the rest of Nu Faran,' said Jean with a smile.
After a while, I could see from the way Dawn rocked back and forth that her short attention span had run out.
'Why don't you go and have a run and then go home,' I said. 'Jean and I can go through the rest of the notes and see what we can find.'
'Really?'
'Yes. It's been a busy day. I'll call you tomorrow.'
'How are we going to do this?' I asked, for once not sure what to do.
'I'll make a list of all the initials to start with,' said Jean. 'We can look at each set of initials and see who we think it is. Then we can compare them to the notes and see if we can work out why everyone was being blackmailed.' Jean sighed as she looked at the list. 'She certainly was a busy wee swine. Ok. First one AM.'
'Anne MacDonald,' we chorused.
'Let's not be silly,' I said, 'she hasn't any time to do anything wrong. She's always working in the shop.'
'Perhaps she's defrauding the Post Office and Yvette found out,' said Jean. 'There's always stuff in the papers about that.'
'Wasn't that a faulty computer system?' I said.
'Probably. Anyway, I don't see how Yvette could have found out.'
Who else do we know with the initials AM?' I said.
'Well if we include the Macs there's Andy McCallum, Amy MacKellar, Ann Marshall,'
'This is not working,' I said,' let's have a look at the notes for AM first and see if we can figure it out from them.'
'Ok. Just a second. Here it is. AM seen with TP, JM ignorant.'
'Seen with,' I said, 'someone married and being unfaithful?'
'Of course,' said Jean,' Abigail Martin she ran off with Trevor Patrick. Her husband John was gutted. He had no idea.'
'What?' I said, 'How did I miss that?'
'It was not long after Donald left Dawn. Then she discovered he'd been seeing that other
woman long enough to get her pregnant. You were spending a lot of time with Dawn.'
I thought for a moment I heard a tinge of jealousy in her voice, but Jean had never been close to Dawn. They only met each other when their mothers were in the same hospice.
'Yvette couldn't have been blackmailing Abigail for long then,' I said.
'That makes sense,' said Jean, 'there were only two payments noted and then they stopped.'
'Looks like they decided it was not worth paying her and they would come clean about it instead,' I said. 'Let's try another then.'
'Here's another one with only a couple of payments,' Jean said, 'SG. Payments stopped last June. Sabrina Grange?'
'Not a chance,' I said, 'Have you seen her social media page? She has umpteen pictures of herself and is drunk in every single one of them. Even when it was her son's wedding all her pictures were of herself. None of the bride or groom. The only time she had a picture of her family was when she put in one of her with her partner and two sons saying, "We're happy together for once. Amazing what alcohol can do." Her pages are public so she's washing her own dirty laundry all over the Internet. She had no secrets for Yvette to find.'
Jean laughed, 'Not her then.'
'How about Sheena George?' I said. 'She died about then.'
'I remember,' said Jean. 'We picked her up in our ambulance. It was sad. She was so young.'
'I never did hear why she died,' I said.
Jean looked away from me and rustled through the pages again.
'SW,' said Jean.
'Let's check what the notes are for it before we accuse half the people in the scheme,' I said.
'Ok. Here we go Slut. Saw her at clinic. She'd better include me from now on.'
'Wonder what clinic,' I said.'Sounds like it's someone she knows well.'
'Suzy Walker?' said Jean.
'One of her own friends?' I asked. 'Could be. Yvette was capable of stabbing anyone in the back. Even one of her friends.'
We decided to keep a separate list of possible blackmail victims who worked with Yvette. Then when we visited the office we could kill a growing number of birds with one stone. It wasn't long before I began to get depressed at how many people I knew had a dishonest streak. I'm pretty cynical, but I'd always thought people in Nu Faran were better than this.
'You have to hand it to Yvette,' I said, 'she had an amazing knack of ferreting out people's secrets. She certainly took it all very seriously. I'm surprised she had to work at all.'
'She probably worked to find more victims,' said Jean.
'It might be an idea to forget about finding out who killed her,' I said. 'It seems like they've done the world a favour.'
'Hmmm,' said Jean,' I can't argue with you there. The trouble is you were there when she died. In "police think" that makes you guilty. We'd better carry on and find someone else to blame.'
By now the copy of the notebook was beginning to get in a muddle. There were pages everywhere. I picked one up one of the payment sheets.
'How about this one?' I said, 'C.M. Christine Murray?'
'What on earth could she blackmail Christine about? She's not short of money since she inherited from her parents. She doesn't work so she couldn't be involved in petty pilfering. And her husband is dead so she can't be having an affair.'
'What do the notes say?' I said.
'I can hardly find anything, Jean said shuffling through the notes. 'I'll take them home when I go and sort them out there. Ah, here it is.
Brakes cut? Bye bye. Who was she with day before her husband killed? Oh my god. I think she's saying that Christine hired the hit man who killed her husband. She could have been implying the hit man was Christine's lover. But didn't the police believe it was something to do with her husband's work? I heard the firm he worked for had criminal connections.'
'Exactly.' I said, 'I don't think the police even considered Christine as a suspect because of the work connections. But if Yvette saw Christine talking to the killer beforehand, they might think again. And the cut brakes might refer to her parents' accident. I always thought Christine was too nice.'
'So, what are we going to do?' said Jean.
'Well Christine's no danger to anyone at the moment,' I said. 'I'm working tomorrow. I'll pop by Christine's house in the morning and get her the key for the briefcase as an excuse to talk. I'll see what I can slip into the conversation and with a bit of luck get a look at what's in her briefcase.'
'Be careful,' said Jean with no trace of her customary half-smile. 'Christine might not be a danger now, but she won't always be in hospital.'
'Don't you worry,' I said, 'I'll be so smooth she'll not even realise she's given me all the info I need.'
Turn of the Screw
Next day at work, key in hand, I popped down to see Christine, but she was sound asleep. I had enough of waking people up at my work to feed them or give them sleeping pills to waste time watching someone sleep.
As I left her room I sensed or perhaps heard rather than saw someone rush around the corner at the entrance to the ward. Curious I looked when I got there but saw no-one.
There was the usual queue of folk waiting for visiting to start. I saw Suzy and Lorna waiting to go into the next ward, but they were having a heated discussion and they would not have noticed anyone.
Sheila was coming from the direction of the lifts.
'Did anyone pass you?' I asked.
'I didn't see anyone. The door to the stairs was shutting when I got out the lift. Someone must have gone out there. Is there a problem?'
'No, I was just curious. You here to visit Christine?'
'Not today. I've got a parishioner in the next ward.'
'A saint as always. See you on Thursday if not before.'
I passed Angela on the stairs. She had a bunch of lilies.
'They don't allow flowers on the wards now,' I said.
'Oh no. They're for my Gran. She's very ill and these are her favourites.'
'Sorry to hear that,' the platitude was automatic. 'The nurses may let you show them to her.'
#
She looked around anxiously. Why on earth had she tried to hide when she saw Lisa? If she had kept her nerve Lisa would not have thought anything about her being there. It was just... this was riskier.
She'd had no problem doing away with Yvette, that gluttonous backstabbing bitch, because the hall had been empty. But this was different there were so many people around. Still, she was good at making herself invisible.
She swallowed and raised her head. Let's get on with this.
#
It was visiting time when I got back to my ward so I joined the rest of the nurses behind the desk for our afternoon cuppa and gossip. A visitor had dropped off a box of chocolates and I tucked in before all the best ones were gone.
Visiting wasn't even over when I was called back down to the trauma ward. There was a problem with Christine. To my surprise, considering our less than organised chaos, my ward manager agreed that I could go.
The trauma ward was the floor below mine so it didn't take me long to get there.
I expected a flurry of activity in Christine's room, but the door was shut and several staff members were standing around. This did not look good. One of the nurses waved me into the room and I found Robert Steele, Christine's consultant, standing over her. Christine was lying on the bed and I didn't need to take her pulse to see she was dead. Her sightless eyes and the frozen scream on her mouth showed me that.
'Ah Lisa,' Robert said. 'I know you've been visiting Christine. Did you notice anything wrong when you were here earlier?'
'I didn't get a chance to talk to her. She was asleep. What happened?'
'We don't know. Her injuries were not life threatening.'
He sounded worried as well he might if he'd missed something.
I moved over to look at Christine. She seemed bright enough the day before. I couldn't understand how she could be dead. I wiped a tear away. I know Yvette thought she mi
ght have arranged several murders, but to me, she always seemed like a good person. She was so cheerful and kind at the classes, even if she was a bit obsessed with Yvette's death.
'I'm sorry for your loss,' Robert said.
He didn't sound sorry. But let's face it death is a normal part of working in a hospital. Besides, he didn't much care about how I felt and that was probably to be expected. Robert had asked me out a few years back and was shocked and horrified when I refused. How could a lowly nurse refuse to date an eligible consultant? I had my reasons but they were none of his business.
I sighed and looked at Christine. We hadn't been close, but other than the always busy Anne, I was the nearest thing she had to a friend. Then I noticed a tiny puncture mark on her neck.
'I've seen marks like this in Africa. It was the execution method of a gang. They pushed a sharpened bicycle spoke down through the neck into the heart. It was difficult to detect other than the mark. You had better call in the police.'
A flicker of relief crossed Robert's face. A murder would be much better for him than a missed diagnosis. He could blame a murder on the nurses.
Back in my own ward, I found Jean waiting for me. I loved that she would rush up to see me whenever she had a break at the hospital. I told her about Christine.
'Are you all right?' she said.
'Oh yes. We weren't that close.'
Despite what I said I could hear a tremor in my voice.
'I can stay for a little while,' said Jean.
I was glad of someone to talk to.
As we sat and chatted, I heard a loud harsh bellow from one of the bays "Nurse". Jean leapt off her seat and started heading towards the bay.
'What are you doing?' I asked.
'That man sounds in pain. He surely wouldn't have shouted so loud unless there was something seriously wrong.'
'That's Mr McPherson, that's his normal voice,' I said, 'he'll want to know if he has any visitors. He never does - thankfully. When he was not long in, his daughter and grandson came up from England to visit. The child was a normal boy. Tore about the place damaging equipment, tripping people up and yelling at the top of his voice. But it was when the daughter started talking that we all searched for earplugs. She was as loud as her father and the pair of them talked non-stop.
