'Siobhan,' Elsie says by way of explanation.
‘And you’re sure that Leanne hasn’t stayed the night with her friend Siobhan instead of Carensa?’
‘Definitely not.’ It is Elsie who answers, fury has replaced her anxiety for a few moments. ‘Look here, inspector. My husband’s a butcher. I clean offices. We live on a council estate. We are true honest people, but Siobhan’s parents have made it clear that they don’t like it at all that our girls are best friends. We're not good enough for them. Siobhan is not allowed to come here, Leanne is not at all welcome at theirs.’
Nodding, I make a mental note to come back to this point later. For now, it clouds their objectivity and more so, their ability to answer my questions with full concentration. They have called friends and relatives, schoolmates and other parents, they have talked to neighbours and even to the youths that seem to have adopted the bus shelter as the main place for their gatherings.
‘How old is Leanne?’
‘She’s just turned fourteen.’
A dangerous age. Trapped in no man's land between child and woman. Vulnerable. Innocent. Susceptible to persuasion and temptation. An easy target for predators.
‘Did you talk to anyone at school? Did anyone see her get on the bus? Or where she got off?’
‘Not that we know of.' His eyes tell me clearly that I am supposed to find out all of this for him. My job is to find his daughter.
Elsie frowns, her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. In front of her, the tea is growing cold, the biscuits forgotten. ‘A cousin of mine saw her on the bus to Newquay. She doesn’t know Siobhan, or Carensa, so she didn’t know if Leanne was with anyone. The schoolchildren normally go on the top of the double decker bus. They make such noise that other people stay downstairs.’
The picture clear, I know the feeling. ‘But your cousin didn’t notice there was someone … acting suspiciously?’
‘She would’ve told me if there was.’
‘Did your cousin see Leanne getting off the bus?’
‘Sadly, no. She got off earlier.’
My questions seem to give them some relief because they’re no longer alone in this. But at the same time, they become more anxious as the realisation is dawning on them that one of any parent’s worse nightmares is becoming a reality.
‘Okay.’ I clear my throat, trying to sound neutral and professional. ‘I’ll need names and addresses. As much detail as you can remember.’
Once more exchanging glances, Lobb retrieves a sheet of paper from between a pile of newspapers and magazines on the floor next to his feet. It is a list in a neat and tidy handwriting. ‘Elsie’s done that already,’ he says with a strange, sad smile. ‘We’ve talked about it all the time.’
A small lump in my throat makes it impossible to answer. I see hope flutter across their faces. Eyes like a loyal, trustful dog’s left tied to a deserted post because its owners can or will no longer keep it.
Retrieving my mobile I wonder what to tell Guthrie.
3
The waiting room is crowded with the smell of warm bodies. An electric fan on the reception desk is attempting to make the atmosphere a little less close. Mostly couples, or patients supported by a relative or friend, sit and wait, quietly, or talking softly, comparing their ailments, and bracing themselves for what is to come once they’re called in to see the doctor. Good or bad news, giving fresh hope or shattering it, the waiting is always nerve-wracking.
I choose the first available vacant seat, close enough to the exit to take full advantage of a burst of fresh air when someone enters or leaves. Or perhaps the truth is that I like the idea of being able to run away quickly, without causing a stir, without raising too many eyebrows.
Noticing that I seem to be the only unaccompanied patient, I am perched between two women. Both are in their late sixties. One is accompanied by her husband who seems to be dozing, or attempting to doze; the other has her daughter with her who is obsessed with her mobile phone and ignores the sign with a polite request not to use phones inside the hospital buildings.
Two volunteer ladies are trying to negotiate a trolley between the tangle of patients’ outstretched legs, and bags full of with unnecessary items: extra jackets and cardigans, books they won't read, spare glasses. The trolley is carrying an irregularity of mugs - one full of rattling teaspoons - a plastic milk bottle, a glass bowl with sugar cubes and a Celebrations tin. Chatting away cheerfully to one another, the volunteer ladies are keeping a close eye on the newcomers, addressing them with a warm and understanding smile and offering hot drinks and biscuits.
‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ Her badge tells me her name is Florence, representing a cancer charity.
It feels like I’m faced with Murphy's law: if I accept a drink, I will be called in to the doctor straight away and won’t know what to do with my mug, and if I decline, it will probably be ages before I get called in.
‘Thank you,’ I decide and the daughter with the mobile phone says, ‘Tea please,’ without even noticing that the offer didn't involve her.
Dressed in a black skirt and a pink-and-white striped knitted pullover, a woman opposite me starts a conversation with the woman by my side as their husbands nod and smile briefly in recognition. Appearing to be regular visitors here, an exchange of rather detailed medical information follows, duly listened to by me and other patients. I am suddenly anxious that the conversation will extend to me and that I will be asked to share my specific medical details and experiences too. Quickly picking up a magazine, I flick through the pages and try to concentrate on articles about luxury holiday cruises around the world and glamorous interior home designs that most people can’t afford. Perhaps these magazines are so popular because people like to have unrealistic dreams, especially in a waiting room of a cancer ward.
A nurse enters the waiting room. Her eyes drift across our faces, as if she’s trying to work out who’ll be her next victim. Glancing at a sheet of paper, she calls a name. Edgar Harries rises from his seat, glancing nervously at his pink-striped wife, who also makes a move to get up. Sounding self-assured, presumably due to experience, the nurse tells Mrs Harries to wait here and her husband will be back in a minute: it's only for a blood test. Mrs Harries nods. Her eyes are like deep ponds, dark and full of fear.
We fall into a conspiracy of collective silence. Mrs Harries shifts uncomfortably, as though the departure of her husband has deprived her of the ability to talk. Without a word, lips pursed and eyes downcast, she gets up and sneaks out of the waiting room, leaving the rest of us in an even more unsettled silence. We glance furtively at one another, uncertain and slightly nervous. The woman next to me, her new companion gone, seems to be casting around, looking for a new victim. As her eyes settle on me, I squeeze mine shut quickly, dropping the magazine on my lap to appear to be dozing off.
My thoughts wander towards the missing girl. Leanne. Somehow it feels wrong to be sitting here while I should be looking for her. Leanne is out there somewhere. By choice, on an illicit trip with her best friend or with a boyfriend she hasn’t told anyone about? Or something else, the unthinkable, has happened to her? For all I know, she might be right here in Treliske after an accident, or an attack. Hurt. Wounded. Unidentified.
The two vacant seats are soon taken by another couple. Anxiously I recognise Mr Wood who had his operation the day after I had mine. For a few days we shared a room, allowing us an intimacy that seems to make us both embarrassed now. I stare at his stomach, trying to detect the bulge of his stoma bag under his baggy shirt. He glances at me in the same way and we nod a mutual greeting, silently agreeing that none of the other people need know about our shared history and circumstances. Unfortunately, Mrs Wood thinks otherwise. Her mouth opens. I can see all the revealing questions being formed in her head but before she can emit the first one, the appearance of Mr Cole draws her attention in a different direction. Caught by several wary pairs of eyes, he has a smile for all of us, but his eyes dart over the tops of o
ur heads, not seeing the individual patients. Leaning towards the nurse behind the desk, who hands him a patient file, he looks up when Mrs Wood clears her throat and says, ‘Mr Tregunna.’
Mr Cole turns his head and nods briefly in my direction. I try telepathy to make him call my name, as he looks down at the file in his hand. He does call a name but not mine. Margaret Brookham. Nervous suddenly, the woman next to me fumbles with the buttons of her coat, unsure whether to undo them. Picking up her handbag and holding a scarf that tries to slip down off her shoulder, she drops a walking stick. It falls on the lino floor with a clatter like gunshot which forces her daughter to drag her attention away from her mobile phone. With pursed lips and eyes like daggers, she bends to pick up the walking stick, stuffing her mobile phone in her pocket, reluctantly following her mother.
‘Mrs Wood.’ I nod in reply, not sounding encouragingly.
‘How are you, Mr Tregunna? We had good news, didn’t we, Roy? The tumour appears to be shrinking. But …’ She hesitates with a frown, uncertain whether it would be appropriate to go on. ‘That’s what they say. Then why, we wonder, does he still need treatment with …’
‘Carole.’ Roy Wood pokes his elbow in her side.
‘Andy Tregunna?’
Not saved by the bell but by a young nurse. Her warm grey eyes are full of sympathy. A pair of dark-rimmed glasses sits on top of her forehead, strands of blonde hair stand upright around them. For the briefest of moments I contemplate whether to pretend it isn’t me she has called, as if Mr Tregunna hasn’t showed up for his appointment. But Carole Wood is staring at me like a schoolteacher who knows what her pupils are up to, and her husband inclines his head, reading my thoughts.
I follow the dancing blonde hair along corridors with green lino on the floor and strip lights on the ceiling. One light is flickering intermittently. Framed prints of sunny seascapes on the walls attempt to improve the gloomy atmosphere. We pass beech wood doors with green plastic handles. One of them is open. I peer inside and see the examination couch is empty, while Margaret Brookham and her daughter sit quietly in the corner, one staring into oblivion with fingers nervously adjusting the zipper of her handbag, the other leaning forward, elbows on knees and tapping the screen of her mobile phone as if it’s her last chance to make a connection with the rest of the world. Further along the corridor, we come across a male nurse standing at a water cooler, a pink folder under his arm, balancing two plastic cups in one hand as he fills a third.
'Here we are, Mr ...' She needs to check her sheet. '... Tregunna.'
The examination couch against the wall in the room I am ushered into is covered with a white paper sheet. A tray of empty test tubes sits alongside a box with hypodermic needles and bandages on a small side-table. Gesturing me to sit down, the nurse closes the door behind us. The walls are painted a pale yellowy-green, the only decoration is a framed poster of a desert scene: Bedouins sitting stoically on camels, the outline of a pyramid just visible in the distance. Perhaps someone chose the picture as a reminder of a happy holiday, but I suddenly feel the cruelty of it.
Questioning me about my health and well-being, my diet and toilet habits, my physical state in general, and my mental state, the nurse listens, frowning her thin arched eyebrows. Yet the smile plastered on her face remains intact: she's too young to understand what lies behind my answers.
Once she has ticked the relevant boxes on the sheet on her clipboard, I am weighed, measured and then relieved of so many tubes of blood that I almost suggest she should weigh me again.
She tugs her clipboard under her arm. ‘Have you brought someone with you?’
I feel like a child facing the teacher having forgotten my homework. ‘No.’
Studying my face for a few seconds, she shrugs. ‘Please don’t hesitate to ask for assistance if you require anything, Mr Tregunna. We're here to help and support you.’
She sounds like the messenger of very bad news.
‘Thank you.’
‘Mr Cole will see you shortly.’
She disappears with a smile, her notes and my blood. Thinking of the nurse's last words, I regret that I haven’t told Lauren about the appointment. I didn't want her to get too involved. I couldn’t face her sympathy, her pity. But I would have loved if she’d been here with me now.
Ten minutes later the same nurse emerges, letting me know, regretfully, that Mr Cole has had an emergency call; a patient he operated on in the morning urgently requires his attention. Her smile tells me that she’s unable to detect my mixed feelings of relief and annoyance. Staring at her clipboard again, she tells me the options: I can wait - but it will probably take a while - or make a new appointment at the desk.
‘Either way, I think it’s best to make your way back to the waiting room.’ Broadening her smile, she adds persuasively, ‘There are magazines and papers and I’m sure the ladies with coffee and tea are still there.’
And other patients, I think. Nevertheless, I follow her obediently along the corridors as if I’m unable to find my way to the waiting area. The nurse at the desk is speaking on the phone, chewing the end of a pencil and staring at her computer screen. Every once in a while, she looks up nervously, wondering how to finish the call quickly but politely. Instead of joining the queue, I follow the woman who is struggling back with the walking stick and her daughter still typing messages in her phone. Holding open the door, I accept Margaret Brookham's warm and earnest smile but receive not even a glance from the daughter. There are much more important things in life than offering a polite smile.
Five minutes later, I walk between the maze of hospital buildings which make it look more like a small village of scattered, partially renovated buildings than a place where people are born and die, and anything in between.
The Air Ambulance helicopter, its blades still and quiet, is parked in front of the A&E department. Briefly wondering whether Leanne’s body has been found, I dismiss the idea instantly with a fleeting optimism that she’ll probably be home by now. Safe. Unharmed.
As if on cue, my mobile vibrates in my pocket. Half hoping that it’s Patrick Lobb to tell me the good news, I look at the screen. It isn’t him. I recognise the number.
‘Lauren. Hi.’
‘Hi.’
I pause one or two seconds too long. It’s probably my guilty conscience.
‘I hope I'm not interrupting anything?’ she asks.
‘No.’ My reply is curt, guilt undisguised.
When I went for the result of the first scan after surgery, Lauren had invited me to her home afterwards to share the news with her. Good or bad. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but it wasn’t. When I gave her a brief summary of what I’d been told, her face crumpled and I saw pity in her eyes. And regret.
It wouldn’t be fair on her to take our growing friendship further. Not even with tiny steps. I knew it, but I didn’t act on it. I was, and I am, a coward when it comes to feelings.
‘It’s only …’ Her voice is a tad lower. ‘The boys …’
I can hear her ten-year-old sons in the background. They are identical twins. According to statistics, they can read each other’s mind, finish their sentences and break an arm on the same day. Surprisingly, Stuart and Joe seem to argue a lot.
‘Stu! Please! Can you be quiet for a moment? I’m talking to Andy.’ Mentioning my name seems to have the opposite effect. More noise and shouting.
‘Andy? Sorry, are you still there?’
‘I am.' A car with a blaring radio passes.
She listens, uncertain. ‘Or shall I call you back later?’
‘No, mum! Ask him now!’ Stuart or Joe shout back.
‘You promised, mum!’ The other one whines. At least they seem to agree on something.
‘Okay. Andy, ehm … Friday is my birthday and I was wondering …’
She stops when she hears the siren of an ambulance approaching behind me. I can sense her brain ticking as she wonders, realises even, where I am. The ambulance's siren stops a
bruptly as it draws up opposite the Air Ambulance, where two men have just climbed in, gesturing teasingly, and laughing at the arriving colleagues.
‘Go on, Lauren,’ I say softly.
‘It’s Joe’s idea but …’
‘No mum, it’s mine!’
‘Oh, will you two stop it now?’ Her voice is high and there is a tremble in it. I can hear regret also. ‘Andy?’ She composes herself. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have called.’
‘Mum!’ Two excited boys are by her side.
‘Andy?’ A young voice.
‘Yes.’ I sigh. ‘Make it quick please, whichever of the two you are.’
‘I'm Joe.’ He chuckles. ‘Mum can’t hear the difference on the phone either.’ Another chuckle. ‘Stuart’s taking mum into the kitchen, because we’d like it to be a surprise.’
‘Okay.’
‘Its mum’s birthday on Friday and we’re off school.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Mum’s birthday?’
‘No. You being off school on Friday.’
‘Something to do with our teachers.’ It doesn’t interest him in the slightest. All he cares about is the extra day off.
Muffled sounds in the background again. Lauren, still embarrassed, half-objecting to Joe speaking to me.
‘We would like to take mum out to the Lobster Hatchery in Padstow.’
‘And you think she will like that?’ I ask, suppressing a smile.
He takes a deep breath. Considers. ‘And take her out for lunch.’
‘And you are inviting me as well?’
‘Yes. No. We thought … that you can invite us for lunch. I mean mum. For her birthday.' There is a long pause. Joe speaks first. Taken aback all of a sudden as he clearly expected more enthusiasm from me. 'Ehm … it was just an idea.’
Behind him a door is closed hard. ‘Joe! I warned you! Give me the phone!’
It’s so easy to picture her, with her ginger curls cascading down her shoulders or tied up on top of her head, her eyes blue and pale against her face, flushed with embarrassment.
What every body is saying: DI Tregunna Cornish Crime novel Page 3
