The kitchen window of Harper sported a yellowing net curtain, ill-hung, but at least the lights on inside made it seem more welcoming. One half of the ward was in complete darkness. As I opened the wooden door it was the quiet I noticed. No hustle and bustle of visitors leaving, no nurses walking to and fro. To my left in a row of about eight beds lay what looked like the victims of some gruesome catastrophe. Most looked comatosed, rather than asleep, their bodies in foetal positions or awkwardly propped up on pillows. The ward curtains were open, each bed facing dark, rain-lashed windows. The weather, though, had ceased long ago to be a matter of concern for the ladies of Harper Ward. The nursing office separated the two halves of the ward and as I walked in I noticed that the right-hand-side patients seemed a bit fitter. Four old ladies slumped in straight-backed chairs with wooden arms. Others gazed at me anxiously from their beds.
I was the first of the night staff to arrive. A young staff nurse sat at the desk writing the report. She looked up and with obvious effort smiled.
‘Agency?’
I nodded and smiled in return.
‘Take a seat. We're a bit behind as usual. Typical day in this madhouse.’
She sounded very depressed. I was beginning to feel depressed too. At five past eight I was still the only night nurse.
‘I'll give you the report now,’ she said. ‘Someone's bound to turn up soon.’
She didn't sound convinced. The report contained such gems as ‘didn't eat her supper' or ‘bowels well opened' and even ‘still stiff as a board'. At least the technicalities weren't going to be a problem. Halfway through the report an auxiliary nurse turned up – small, cheerful and bubbly.
‘Hi. Sorry I'm late. Stupid kid of mine cut his knee open just as I was leaving. You agency?’
‘Berkerly,’ I said, smiling. I felt more cheerful now.
‘Don't worry about anything. I've been on the last three nights. Routine's always the same.’
We listened to the rest of the report and I tried to catch on to a few names but they all seemed to blur in a time-warp of similar ones – Ivy, Nellie, Hilda, Edith, Grace, Minnie, Dollie.
When the staff nurse had gone, along with another nurse who had appeared from a sitting-room at the end of the ward, my companion turned to me and introduced herself. ‘I'm Linda Brington. I'll show you round first and then we'll do the night drinks. That okay?’
‘Fine. I'm Kate Kinsella.’
Linda bustled out quickly. ‘This is what I call the “baby's end”,’ she said as we walked past the sleeping patients. ‘There's the sluice, bathroom, loo, and staff loo. Clinical room's at the end of the ward, next to die sitting-room.’
I followed her pointing finger.
‘Never forget to close the smallest windows will you? Some buggers will manage to get in anywhere.’
As we walked back we closed the curtains until we reached the door. Linda dropped the door catch and then shot the bolt. ‘We keep it closed until the morning. Never open it unless you're sure it's someone you know.’
‘We're not likely to have someone try to get in, are we?’
‘Have done in the past but I'll tell you about that later. Could you start doing the drinks for the patients sitting out?’ Linda moved off quickly down the ward. She was obviously going to organise me completely.
As I approached the three patients grouped around a table, a tiny gnome-like old lady wearing a cotton mob-cap peered at me intently.
‘Hello, Mrs Bluefrock. Are you back then?’
‘I'm back. Would you like a drink?’
‘What's she say?’ she asked no one in particular.
‘Would you like a drink?’ I repeated, mouthing the words carefully.
Before she could answer another patient sat up in bed shouting, ‘Pleasa, pleasa, pleasa.’
This seemed to strike a cord with more patients and one screamed out, ‘I'm pissing myself!’
‘I want the commode,’ another wailed.
It was Linda who restored peace; walking into the ward she quickly summed up the situation. ‘Gladys, stop whingeing. Eva, you'll have to wait. Ivy, tea?’ Her familiar voice had a calming effect and the ward soon became quiet again.
‘Don't worry, Kate, they always play up new nurses; they get insecure.’
When eventually the drinks had been given out at one end of the ward we moved down to the other. Little of my previous nursing experience could have prepared me for the sheer frailty of these old ladies. The contorted bodies, the skin so delicate and easily bruised, the eyes which stared ahead without seeing. We worked together steadily, moving from bed to bed, washing, powdering, putting on clean nighties, giving tablets, saying ‘Goodnight, God bless.’
‘Kiss me, Mother,’ said one. ‘I haven't been a naughty girl, have I?’
‘You've been very good,’ I said kissing her cool cheek.
By eleven the ward was quiet, the night light glowed and Linda walked into the office with a tray of tea. I felt exhausted, my back ached from lifting and rolling and heaving but Linda still seemed fresh and alert.
‘Not a bad “change”,’ she said. ‘Sometimes every bed is wet.’
As we drank the tea I asked how long she'd worked at St Dymphna's.
‘Too bloody long.’ She laughed. ‘Mind you, it's better than staying in every night.’
Before I had time to ask why, the phone rang – it was night sister.
‘I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Everything all right?’
‘Fine, thank you. No problems.’
There was no response, just the sound of the phone being slammed down.
‘She's an old crow,’ said Linda. ‘She resents coming up here. Has to take a taxi and bring a porter with her. It's ever since the murder of course. She'll stay about three minutes, that's all.’
‘It's a strange set-up, isn't it? Why on earth aren't the night sisters on site?’ I asked.
‘Cutbacks. We're closing down. There's only one problem.’
‘What's that?’
‘No one wants the patients. The private nursing homes don't want them, the General doesn't have room. I think the managers are hoping the patients will just die off before the new financial year.’
‘Why don't the nursing homes want them?’
‘Too much like hard work I suppose.’
‘What about the staff, will they be redeployed?’
‘Some will. Most of us are looking for new jobs now. Ever since the murder we've all been a bit nervy, it gets really creepy here at times.’
‘Murder,’ I said in mock surprise. ‘What happened?’
Linda didn't get a chance to reply as a loud rapping on the door disturbed us. I'd neither heard footsteps nor a taxi draw up. I guessed it was night sister, but that didn't stop my bottom from lifting from the seat in surprise. Linda, though, was on her feet first.
‘Who is it?’ she called.
‘Night sister.’
Linda unlocked and unbolted the door.
‘I can't be long. Taxi's waiting.’
She looked me up and down as I came out of the office. I did the same to her. In late middle age she looked as if like had treated her unfairly. Lines of anguish lay across her face like the National Grid. Pale blue eyes, with creased lids, flickered nervously in a face that had probably once been pretty. Her floppy white cap looked as tired as her face.
‘Berkerly Agency?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘Don't forget to get your time-sheets signed.’
‘I won't,’ I said, smiling, trying to be pleasant.
‘Come on, let's get this round done.’
She was so fast I could barely keep up.
‘Ward's tidy,’ she said, as she walked out of the door Linda held open in readiness for her.
I laughed when she'd gone. ‘Is she usually like that?’
‘Like a bat out of hell – always,’ said Linda. ‘Mind you, she'd had a hard life. Her only son died in a motorbike accident and her husband's an alcohol
ic.’
For a while then we fell silent. Linda took out a magazine and I read a newspaper. Occasionally the central heating thumped, the strip lighting buzzed and a patient mumbled incoherently in her sleep. But it was the sounds outside I heard more acutely, an owl hooting, the wind in the trees, the rain against the windows, a far-distant car. It was a little later that I heard footsteps. I looked up startled.
‘It's okay. It's only the security man,’ said Linda, looking at her watch. ‘He always does one round at midnight, then about two, then about five.’
‘Was he here the night of the murder?’
‘Huh!’ said Linda. ‘He was supposed to be. We had to find Jacky. He was nowhere to be found.’
‘Who's we?’
‘Me and the staff nurse from Melba Ward. Jacky had gone across to get some more incontinence pads about midnight and she didn't return.’
‘Did you know her well?’
‘I'd worked with her quite a bit. Too religious for me; she was a bit goody-goody. Didn't drink or smoke or swear. Still, she didn't deserve to get murdered.’
‘I don't suppose anyone does.’
Linda looked at me sharply. ‘Don't you believe it,’ she said. ‘Some people ask for it.’
Chapter Three
‘Who do you know who's asking to be murdered?’ Linda hadn't volunteered any names, so I decided to take the bull by the horns.
‘That boring fart who sits at home in front of the telly. He's a prime example. That's why I work nights; I'd be divorced by now or he'd be dead if I didn't.’
‘How would you murder him, if you had the chance?’
She paused, her eyes bright with interest, then she smiled. ‘We'd be in bed,’ she said. ‘He'd be fast asleep as usual and then – I'd sit on his head and suffocate him – he's only a little bloke.’
My expression must have amused her because she began to laugh so raucously that I joined in.
‘Oh, God,’ she said between laughs, ‘you've got a morbid sense of humour.’
When we'd finally regained control she asked, ‘Are you married?’
‘No one would have me,’ I said. ‘Well, one or two would have. Wimpy ones. I fancy the rugged, intrepid kind. You know the type – they paddle a raft up the Orinoco.’
Linda didn't, she looked puzzled. ‘Haven't you ever lived with a man?’
‘I did once, for three years. Dave – he died.’
‘An illness?’
‘No, accident.’
Somehow I couldn't tell her my one time live-in lover had been felled by a stray brick as he passed a building site. He'd been drunk at the time. Died instantly. Not exactly a hero's death, especially for a police inspector. I hadn't been heartbroken; shocked – yes. Live-in he may have been, but he spent most of his time in the pub or working. Even so, since Dave, there had been no one else. I suppose he was intrepid in his own way. And he did die near the canal in Camden Town. That was his Orinoco.
Linda must have felt awkward at my silence because she got up abruptly. ‘I'll do a round.’
I followed her out and we walked past the beds, checking no one had died surreptitiously. One or two lay mouths open, breaths hardly perceptible. They looked not just dead, but long dead.
Back in the office we ate toast and drank tea and amused ourselves planning how we would spend a quarter of a million pools win. It was a sobering thought that somehow we managed neither an evening out nor a new outfit on our winnings.
‘That's another dream shattered,’ announced Linda. ‘Just as well I don't know how to fill out the coupon.’
At one a.m. our cheerfulness began to wane and Linda suggested we start our breaks. I chose second break, from three to five.
‘We don't get paid for our two-hour break,’ she explained as she collected her cloak from a hook on the office door. ‘You can do whatever you like. Give me a shout if you need a hand and bang on the door at three. If I do go off to sleep I die!’
‘Should I expect anyone while you're gone?’
‘God no!’ Linda burst out. ‘You might hear the security man as he thumps by. You'll soon recognise the sound of his boots. Just occasionally he calls in for a cup of tea, but he always taps on the kitchen window and calls out. More often than not he—’ She broke off as she picked up the tea-tray. Following her out to the kitchen I waited for her to continue, but she didn't.
‘The police don't call in then?’ I asked.
‘They did just after the murder, for weeks! Mind you I think they came more for a chat and a cuppa than anything else. At the beginning CID men came and questioned us, trying to find out if we had alibis. Well, of course, those on duty did – each other. And those off duty had husbands or boyfriends to vouch for them.’
‘Surely they didn't suspect the staff?’ I said, trying to inject a tone of mild incredulity into my voice.
Linda shrugged and began to rinse the mugs. ‘I think it was just routine. They have to investigate all possibilities, don't they? Anyway the Detective Inspector seemed to think it was strange she wasn't raped. He thought a psychopath would only have sex on his mind.’
I wiped the mugs with a paper towel and said nothing.
‘And,’ Linda continued, ‘I told him rape was violence, not sex, and he mumbled something about “Bloody feminists” and left me alone after that.’
As we walked down the ward doing checks and turns I said, ‘Do you think it was peculiar she wasn't raped?’
She gave me a slightly startled look as if I'd said something outrageous. ‘No. Why should I?’
‘No reason. I just wondered.’
I must have looked mystified because she started talking quickly, as if to justify her reaction.
‘Jacky was a bit of a weirdo really – any man who decided to rape her wouldn't have found it easy. She knew every martial art going – karate, kung fu, judo. She was only small but she was tough. Strange, really, she didn't put up more of a fight, but then she was stabbed in the back. I suppose she didn't have a chance.’
‘You were going to tell me about someone getting in here at night,’ I said. We were standing at the day room door.
‘Was I?’ She looked blank. ‘Oh, I remember. Someone once forgot to bolt the door at the bottom end of the ward. A drunk came staggering in with a bag of chips in his hand and started offering them round.’
‘You got rid of him then?’
‘Yes. No problem. You're not nervous at the thought of being on your own, are you?’
‘No, of course not.’ But I was. Every noise, mumble and cough seemed magnified once I sat alone in the office.
One of the patients shouted, ‘Bill, Bill, where are you?’ When I explained Bill was fast asleep, she said, ‘Lazy sod. You go and wake him up.’
I checked her medical notes – Bill had been dead twenty years.
A clanging cot-side sent me rushing to the other side of the ward where Edith had managed to trap her leg between the bars. When I had pushed her leg back and given her a drink and covered her up she shouted indignantly. ‘I know what you're up to, you – you – prostitute.’
After that the ward became quiet again, and between rounds I tried to read the patients' notes. But concentration only came in short rallies and I kept thinking about the night Jacky was killed. That night in the dark, she must have felt safe to have walked through the grounds alone. She could defend herself. Who did she have to fear? Or was there someone afraid of her, someone who had to silence her to save themselves?
Linda didn't need waking.
‘I only dozed. The rain against the windows down there sounds like drumbeats,’ she said as she brushed her hair. ‘Were they all right?’
‘Fine,’ I assured her. I made her a mug of tea and then went down to the day room. Vinyl-covered chairs lined two walls; in one corner sat a television set as blank and sinister as a glass eye. In the other corner was a bird cage, covered with a tablecloth. There were no lamps or tables. It smelt of urine. I sat myself between the two chairs Linda
had covered with a clean sheet and watched the curtains flutter at the French window and listened to the rain and murmurings from the ward. Dozing was easy, sleep was impossible. The bird in the cage began to thrash about as though making suicide attempts by throwing itself at the bars. I took the tablecloth off and wished the budgie well. He or she seemed to understand, because all it did then was try to knock its companion toy budgie from their shared perch.
The two hours between six and eight seemed the shortest of the night because we were so busy. And I hardly noticed how tired I was until I drove away from the hospital. My concentration was definitely impaired and my eyes seemed to stare fixedly ahead in a sort of robotic trance. I had planned to go home but at the Tjunction home was a right turn, the office left. There was no contest, I turned left. It was then I remembered that I was supposed to be seeing Mrs Ada Hellidon.
Via tortuous country lanes I managed to find Short Brampton. The village interior looked quaint, with stone cottages crushed together incestuously. So close were they, it was hard to imagine any knocking-shop activities going on there. There was no shop of any kind. Short Brampton was far too posh for shops.
Ada Hellidon's cottage was easily distinguishable, as it was the only one in need of renovation. The front door, which led directly on to the road, was covered in mud and dust and the paint had peeled back, like some nasty skin disease. I knocked hard on the door.
‘Who is it?’ screeched the reply, like a parrot on heat, and even when I answered, the screech became louder, more insistent. ‘Who is it?’
Hubert had obviously forgotten to say that not only was she half-blind but deaf as welt. As Kate Kinsella meant nothing to her I shouted through the letter-box, ‘Mr Humberstone said I'd call.’ But the front door still didn't open, and eventually I called, ‘It's the district nurse.’
She opened the door then. A tiny old lady with skin the colour of a nicotined finger and hair of a pale purple hue. ‘About time,’ she said. ‘You're new. The doctor's been promising me you'd call for weeks. It's my leg ulcer, you know. Come on in then.’
Deadly Errand Page 3
