Last Writes

by Catherine Aird

  ‘If I had had a text,’ mused Miss Wilkins, ‘you might say it was that old nursery rhyme “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry”.’

  CARE PLAN

  ‘It may be something or nothing, Inspector.’

  Since there was no sensible reply to this statement Detective Inspector Sloan waited in silence for his superior officer to continue.

  ‘And it’s a very delicate matter, too,’ added his superior officer. Actually it was a very superior officer who had called Sloan to his office: the assistant chief constable to boot.

  Detective Inspector Sloan assumed an expression designed to project at one and the same time dispassionate interest and total discretion.

  ‘A family matter, actually,’ vouchsafed the assistant chief constable.

  If the expression on his face slipped Sloan hoped it didn’t show. All police activities were family matters somewhere; what could be very difficult were cases when police matters and the family matters of those in the police force came together. As a rule, resolving these fell unhappily somewhere between averting a conflict of interest and not conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

  ‘My family,’ said the assistant chief constable heavily.

  This, at least, explained Sloan’s summons to an office with a carpet rather than one with the workaday linoleum that did duty as floor-covering in the rest of the police station.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the senior policeman eagerly. ‘I knew you’d understand, Inspector.’

  ‘When you say “family”, sir …’

  ‘My uncle, Kenneth Linaker.’

  ‘I see.’ Detective Inspector Sloan searched for the right way of putting his next question. ‘He must be a good age – at least …’ he ventured tentatively, since the assistant chief constable himself was pretty near the top of the promotion tree and his uncle obviously thus older still, ‘that is, sir, he can’t be young …’

  ‘Just hit eighty,’ said the assistant chief constable.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sloan again. Crime was definitely age-related, weighted to the young – older offenders usually growing either less able or more cunning. ‘Some old gentlemen,’ he said delicately, ‘can become quite uninhibited – disinhibited, I think it’s called – especially in the presence of younger members of the opposite sex.’

  ‘Nobody at the residential home he’s in has complained of that,’ said the assistant chief constable, adding simply, ‘yet.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan.

  This was promptly undermined by Kenneth Linaker’s nephew adding, ‘But I expect the carers know how to handle that sort of behaviour in old gentlemen.’

  ‘I’m sure they do,’ agreed Sloan warmly. An experienced carer was worth her weight in gold – although the gold offered was usually nearer the minimum wage than not.

  ‘They’re very good there although to be quite fair, he himself does think he’s not in his right mind any longer.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right still, I think, Sloan, thank you – oh, sorry.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘I thought for a moment you meant …’

  ‘My mistake, sir,’ said Sloan hastily.

  ‘Me, I think Uncle’s not too bad mentally all things considered.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, no fool, decided against enquiring what the all things were that had to be considered.

  The assistant chief constable leant back in his chair and went on judiciously, ‘Mind you, Sloan, that’s not to say he hasn’t been difficult enough in his time. Petulant, I’d call him. And sometimes a little unwise.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’ He coughed. ‘I think that we can all say this about our relations at some time or other. Old and young.’

  The assistant chief constable nodded absently, his attention apparently centred on a crumpled sheet of paper on his desk before him.

  ‘This problem, then, sir, might I enquire its nature?’ Sloan, not understanding anything, felt he was on safe ground there. There must be a problem in the offing or he wouldn’t have been sent for. And the assistant chief constable wouldn’t be regarding something written on a piece of paper in front of him in the anxious way he was, either.

  ‘Not as easy to quantify as you might think, Sloan,’ said the assistant chief constable. He waved a hand. ‘Oh, I know that nowadays you people are taught to identify the problems first and then tackle them …’

  This was not strictly the case. Identifying problems was not too difficult an exercise: nor, most of the time, was solving them. What was difficult was producing the evidence. But Sloan said none of this. Instead he concentrated on listening carefully to the assistant chief constable, leaning forward slightly towards him and displaying the attention proper to the very senior policeman.

  ‘All we have to hand,’ said that officer, picking up the sheet of paper on his desk, ‘is this care plan that was found by my cousin Candida stuffed under a cushion on a chair in his room – she’s his youngest daughter – when visiting her father in the Berebury Residential Home. And it worried her so much that she brought it to me.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I know anything about care plans, sir …’ He did know quite a lot about unsatisfactory homes for the elderly, though, and even a little about the outcome of so-called pillow fights with the obstreperous old. And of the prescribing of a liquid cosh by a compliant medical attendant when all other calming measures had failed.

  ‘I understand,’ said the assistant chief constable, stressing the words, ‘that in theory care plans are documents purporting to incorporate the needs of the individual patient within the proper running of the residential home under its statutory provisions and are subject to meeting the requirements of the particular social worker who has done the original assessment of the patient.’

  ‘The Berebury Residential Home does have quite a good reputation,’ said Sloan, shamelessly hedging his bets by going on, ‘as such places go.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kenneth Linaker’s nephew. ‘That’s why they chose it.’

  ‘This care plan, sir …’

  ‘Worrying, Sloan, that’s what it is.’ The assistant chief constable passed the document across his desk to the inspector at last. It was headed ‘K.L.’ ‘As you’ll see, there’s lots of information on it. Medical history, race, religion, relatives – that sort of thing, but at least it’s only got his initials at the top, which is something these days when everybody knows everything about everyone.’ He sighed. ‘I’m afraid nothing’s really confidential any more.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan knew that this sentiment actually related to a recent leaking of information to the local newspaper by someone at the police station – which was misconduct in a public office for which the perpetrator could go to prison – and tactfully changed the subject.

  ‘Is the medical history relevant?’ he asked, being a man used to hearing it advanced in court by the defence more often than not. Relevant or not, too.

  ‘I suppose so. He’s on one of those feminising hormones for his prostate trouble – makes him a bit tearful and so forth, which he doesn’t like. They’ve got him down on this care plan thing as rather inclined to bewail his fate. Quite embarrassing for the old chap.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Sloan. Side effects were downplayed by the medical profession in much the same way as statistics were by politicians. When it suited them. In both cases.

  ‘He thinks it’s womanly …’

  ‘This care plan – you said it worried your cousin,’ suggested Sloan to hurry matters along.

  ‘I’ll say,’ said the assistant chief constable. ‘And not without reason.’ He paused reflectively. ‘Sensible girl, Candida, even though …’

  ‘Though?’ said Sloan into the little silence that had fallen.

  ‘Though she upset the old fellow a bit when she wouldn’t have him to stay with her.’

  ‘A bit?’

  ‘Well, a lot really.’ The assistant chief con
stable looked uncomfortable. ‘If you must know, Sloan, he cut her out of his will. And they’ve got all that down, too, in their wretched care plan. See, there, where it says “Execs”, G and R. There’s no mention of Candida at all.’

  ‘I see.’ As far as Sloan was concerned, where there was a will there was a relative. Or three. As well as executors.

  ‘It was when he got too old to live alone. Frail and all that. His other two daughters – Geraldine and Rebecca …’

  ‘G and R,’ divined Sloan.

  ‘That’s right. Well, they tried looking after him in their own homes in turn …’

  ‘But not Candida?’

  ‘Not Candida. Said she would do her duty but that she wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But it got too much for the other two after a bit. He took to wandering, you know.’

  ‘As they do,’ said Sloan, who’d been on the beat in his day and thus knew quite a lot about the demented elderly who will stray in spite of everyone’s best efforts to stop them.

  ‘Frightened them by disappearing one night in the middle of a thunderstorm. That was the last straw as far as the two sisters were concerned.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Sloan. And he did. Unbiddable children were a sore trial to their parents but unbiddable parents, clinging to the last vestiges of their waning authority, could be an even sorer trial to their adult offspring. Role reversal, in his view, was only really acceptable at staff parties or in hospital on Christmas Day. ‘Very worrying for you all.’

  ‘That was when they thought he’d be better off in a home. And it is a good one, although they do tend to have very young staff there from time to time. Girl students from the university in the vacation and so forth.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I still don’t see quite …’

  ‘My cousins wouldn’t contribute to his maintenance at first – at least, Geraldine and Rebecca wouldn’t, even though he’d already given them half his kingdom so to speak.’ He shook his head sadly and pointed to the care plan. ‘That’s all down there, too.’

  ‘Not the sort of thing that should be put about in the home,’ observed Sloan.

  ‘It’s causing no end of trouble in the family, I can tell you, because Uncle’s not really rich any more and my wife and I have – er – a full quiver ourselves and can’t really help, much as we would like to, of course.’

  ‘Of course, sir. I quite understand.’ Detective Inspector Sloan, with a wife and son and a mortgage to support, did not go into the question of what constituted ‘really rich’. In his experience, to most people ‘really rich’ just meant someone with more money than they themselves had.

  Instead, he cast his eye down the care plan and saw that ‘family dissension, big time’ had been duly listed. ‘I can see that things must be difficult, sir,’ he said. ‘But, at least, all that that we’re reading here seems to be true, so …’

  ‘That’s not all of it,’ said the assistant chief constable hollowly. ‘Go on.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan took a firmer grip of the care plan and continued reading. ‘Ah, I see what you mean, sir. There are what you might call – er – considerable complications.’

  ‘I’d call them something else,’ said the assistant chief constable forthrightly. ‘And downright dangerous.’

  ‘You mean this note about G and R being rather too attached to someone put down here as E.G.?’ Sloan gave him an interrogative look.

  ‘The Residential Home Manager,’ said the assistant chief constable shortly. ‘Must be. Name of Gwent. Edward Gwent. Personable chap. Very.’

  ‘Both of them? G and R?’

  ‘They’ve always been able to raise sibling rivalry to a fine art, those two,’ sighed their cousin. ‘I’m quite sorry for the fellow myself.’

  ‘If it’s him.’

  ‘There’s nobody else there with his initials,’ said the assistant chief constable. ‘I’ve checked. Quietly, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And having an affair is not a crime,’ pointed out the older man.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Sloan didn’t want to go into what it was. Not here and now.

  He sighed. ‘There’s another complication, Sloan.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Their husbands.’

  ‘I can see that they would have a view …’

  ‘A view!’ snorted the assistant chief constable. ‘You can say that again. Geraldine’s husband is all right but I must say that Rebecca’s is a bit of a pain.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, working policeman, wasn’t listening. He’d just seen the last note on the care plan. It had been added in pencil. He read it aloud now. ‘Sir, this says “G is going to kill R before the end”.’

  ‘I know. You do see why we’re so worried, Sloan, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ From force of habit he turned the page over. There was something written there, too.

  ‘That, you see, Sloan, is the bit that’s worrying us,’ said the assistant chief constable. ‘About G going to kill R.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you should worry too much, sir,’ said Sloan easily. He handed back the care plan to his superior officer and leant back in his chair. ‘I think you should see what’s written on the back.’

  Puzzled, the assistant chief constable said, ‘I did earlier, Sloan, but I couldn’t make anything of it.’ He quoted it aloud. ‘It says “We have seen the best of our time”. Make a good motto for a residential care home, of course, but that’s not what you mean, is it?’

  ‘No, sir.’ He frowned as a memory of some long-ago English literature homework came back to him. ‘I don’t think I can remember the rest of the quotation.’

  ‘Quotation?’ The assistant chief constable stared at him.

  ‘I think it goes on “machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves” but I can’t be sure, sir.’ He’d once heard a prosecution counsel quote it in a nasty case of fraud.

  ‘That’s from Shakespeare’s King Lear,’ said the assistant chief constable, sitting up. ‘We did him.’

  ‘So did we, sir. Not a good play for the young.’ The unutterable sadness of the witless king had lasted with Sloan long after he’d left the classroom.

  The assistant chief constable tapped the tattered care plan. ‘A send-up, then. With K.L. standing for King Lear …’

  ‘Not Kenneth Linaker,’ Sloan reminded him. ‘And no, not a send-up.’

  ‘And C for Cordelia, G for Goneril and R for Regan,’ said the other man, not listening. ‘Not my uncle and cousins at all.’

  ‘Not a send-up, sir,’ he repeated. ‘A precis.’

  ‘By one of those students earning an honest penny there,’ divined the assistant chief constable, slapping his thigh.

  ‘Someone else’s homework, I would say,’ offered Sloan.

  ‘But not ours,’ said the assistant chief constable, suddenly jovial. ‘Candida should just put this back where she found it and say no more. I’ll tell her.’

  ‘And the rest,’ misquoted Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘should be silence.’

  SLEEPING DOGS, LYING

  ‘Tickets, please.’ The call resounded down the rocking railway carriage. ‘Have your tickets ready … tickets, please.’

  Alice Osgathorp reached for her handbag and got out two rail tickets. As she handed them over to the ticket collector she pointed further down the train and said, ‘My husband’s in the buffet car. You can’t miss him. He’s a little short man.’

  The ticket collector nodded, punched both tickets and continued on his way. Alice settled back in her seat and began to relax and enjoy the passing scenery. It was a very real relief to be on her own now and she relished the peace. Nobody could have ever called home-life in Acacia Avenue, Berebury, peaceful. Not when Frank was around and constantly berating her for this or that – it didn’t seem to matter what she did, he always found fault with it.


  When, much later on that day, she proffered two tickets from Calais to Corbeaux, via Avignon, to the ticket collector on the French train she had much the same exchange with him as she had had on the English one.

  But in French.

  ‘Mon mari est dans le wagon-restaurant, monsieur. C’est un homme peu grand.’ She realised too late that she should have said ‘de petite taille’ – of small stature – rather than ‘peu grand’, not that the French conductor seemed to have noticed. On reflection, though, she thought that although ‘peu grand’ was a bit negative it described him much better than ‘of small stature’. Frank was a little man in every respect, but especially in the way in which he behaved. Small-minded, too.

  She sighed and supposed she should have been more tolerant than she had been. The trouble was, like a lot of short men, he was always throwing his weight about, making her feel lower than a pig’s trotter. And forever being critical about her lack of attention to detail. Well, he wasn’t going to be able to say that again. She was pretty sure she’d thought of everything, absolutely everything.

  As the train pulled out of Lille station she decided that ‘Little Corporal’ described him best of all. But small-minded, as well, she reminded herself as she settled comfortably back in her seat, prepared to enjoy the views of the French countryside and the unaccustomed pleasure of being on her own.

  There was no doubt about the small-mindedness, or that her husband took a perverse pleasure in drawing attention to her shortcomings in public. That was what she found hardest to bear – and to forgive. She knew she wasn’t as clever as he was even though she had held a job down all these years – but it didn’t need trumpeting to all and sundry on every possible occasion.

  It was his retirement that had driven her to take action: the thought of having him in the house whenever she came in was more than she could bear. ‘I married him for better or worse,’ she quoted to herself, ‘but not for lunch.’

  This long-planned French holiday had been to celebrate the beginning of that retirement of his. Well, in a way it was going to. She, of course, would have to go on working. Not that she minded. She quite enjoyed the companionship of her fellow workers and work was somewhere where she was properly appreciated.