House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  It felt good to make someone laugh. It had been months since Marco laughed properly, apart from the night of the job advert, and it had been years since Angel thought I was funny.

  “Right then,” Lars said, standing. Awkward, suddenly. “I better get back to it. The wee shites won’t straighten their own faces, will they?”

  As he was leaving I called him back. “Why didn’t she play games with the tree?” I said. “Julia. Why just the house and the person? She drew a tree for the tree.”

  Lars grunted. “Good point,” he said. “If I bought any of this crap—which I do not because nobody does; it’s one step up from stage hypnotism—but if I did, I’d say her issues are about herself and her home life, so that’s where she plays the games.”

  I nodded as if I thought it was a good answer, but when I thought it over, I wasn’t so sure. How could anyone have issues with a tree anyway? What would it mean? Unless you were a forester or whatever.

  By the time I got home at the end of the afternoon I was wiped. I’d forgotten how much stress you can take on when you lay your hands on stressed people all day. It used to make me glad of things like eyebrow tints and lip waxings. They weren’t great earners but they didn’t leave me with a load on my back like Buckaroo.

  The two boys I had caught up with playing Ping-Pong in the old billiards room had hooted with laughter, of course. I thought I had played it canny; told them all their football heroes got pounded by the physio and nobody would call them sissies.

  “Ah fucken would,” said the smaller one. He was a classic wee ned, from the over-gelled hair poking downwards in spikes on his spotty brow to the pristine trainers like puffballs at the end of his skinny legs. Who was paying his bill to be here instead of in a community centre twice a week and drinking in a bus shelter between times?

  The bigger one sniggered.

  “Different if you did likes of tatts or piercing,” the little one said.

  “I don’t think that would go down very well with the doc,” I said. “Do you,—?”

  “Ryan,” he said. He pointed his bat at the other one. “And Byron.”

  “Byron, like—?” I said and saw the flare of panic in the other boy’s eyes. Ryan had no idea there was a poet called Byron and this Byron didn’t want me blabbing. “So, if you were getting a tattoo, what would you get? You can design them with my pens and paper if you like and then you can take them to the tattoo parlour when you’re out and you’re eighteen.”

  “Ah um eighteen,” Ryan said. “Cheeky bitch. No offence.”

  “I’m sixteen,” Byron said, and I couldn’t mistake the pride in his voice. He might have a daft name and a posh voice but he had managed to get himself into rehab two years earlier than the hard man, and that counted for something.

  “Well, I’ll be back to bug you when I’ve got my timetable sorted,” I said. “Just giving you warning. You don’t need to let me do anything, but we should talk.” I pointed at Byron’s fingers. “I can help you with your nail biting, for instance,” I said. “And, Ryan, well … let’s talk.”

  “Whit aboot?” he demanded. I stared at the spots that crusted his face from the points of his fringe to his collar, swollen and angry on his cheek bones, big painful-looking lumps.

  “Relaxation,” I lied.

  “Ha, pizza-face!” Byron shouted, shaking his floppy locks back from a perfect complexion. Then he ran.

  “Ya fucken bastard,” said Ryan, hurling his table tennis bat at the net and setting off in pursuit, both of them clattering along the corridor whooping like maniacs. From somewhere else in the house an answering wail rose up. I was shaking as I trotted after them.

  I met Dr. F pattering along towards me from the direction of Dr. Ferris’s office. Or maybe they shared it. He took a look at my face and immediately stopped moving.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “Has something happened?”

  “That’s my fault,” I said, jerking my head towards the noise. “I was clumsy and upset Ryan. Byron was unkind to him, but it’s my fault.”

  “Upset?” said Dr. F. “Unkind? Oh, Ali, please. Don’t give it a moment’s thought. It sounds like high spirits to me. Sounds like two boys being boys. I was only concerned that one of them might have assaulted you.”

  I took a step back. “Their language is a bit much and there was some name-calling, but … is there a danger of assault? With either of those two?”

  Dr. F looked over his shoulder before he answered me. “This is the thing with para-therapy,” he said. “With any of the ancillary staff in a small facility like ours. There are so many moments in any day where a cleaner or Hinny in the kitchen or indeed you might be faced with a situation you’re not equipped for.”

  “I see,” I said. It made sense of my pay anyway. “I was kind of surprised how much freedom they have, if I’m honest. Out in the garden, roaming around the house. I suppose I thought it would be more … confined. More … supervised.”

  “Is that how they did things in Australia?” he said. We were walking along in step now. The boys were still shouting somewhere in the other wing, their voices ringing off the bare walls and vinyl floors. “I’ve never been. I’m always surprised by how comparatively old-fashioned the American system seems when you consider that they’re at the cutting edge of medicine overall. Hospice care too. But I have no contacts in Australia.”

  “Well,” I said. “It was ten years ago.” I found all my breath leaving my body in a huge huff. “I was ten years younger too,” I said, exhausted suddenly.

  “Why not call it a day for today?” said Dr. F. I was sure I could hear the clip-clop of his wife’s shoes somewhere on the parquet and I was just as sure his suggestion was connected to him hearing it too. “I’ll take care of sorting all this out,” he added. My table was locked in my room and I had put my washing in the car after Julia, so I nodded and made my escape before those heels could clip-clop their way to finding me.

  I thought about it as I parked outside the house an hour later. I had wondered why her husband wasn’t there for my interview, thinking that maybe he disapproved of me. But maybe he disapproved for me. Maybe he worried I wasn’t trained enough to handle the patients. There was something going on between the pair of them, that was for sure. Then I looked at my own front door. I’d have to sort out what was going on in there too. I gathered my bags and papers and got out, glad at least that there were no press still hanging around. The neighbor’s door opened as I was walking up the path but I broke into a trot and got inside before he could catch me.

  “He’s asleep.” Marco met me right inside the door and whispered, nodding towards Angel’s bedroom. “This thing with the cops and his phone’s really knocked him for six.”

  So, I thought, Angelo hadn’t told him about the girl sending her friends to the Mercat Cross.

  “Last straw,” I said. “After everything.”

  I could have kicked myself, dragging it up like that. I watched Marco struggle not to act hurt as he cast about for something kind to say.

  “Been treating yourself?” he said, with a look at the DE Shoes bag I was carrying. It wasn’t really kind, but it was good-natured. Marco’s never been the sly type.

  “They’re not for me,” I said.

  “Pick-me-up for the boy?” Marco said, beaming at me.

  “Something I need for work,” I said, turning away. I should have got a treat for Angelo, but I’d gone to town and chosen new slippers for Sylvie.

  Ten

  I always told Marco not to wrap me in cotton wool, so I could hardly complain that he had the breakfast news on. I came out of the bathroom and he was already sitting on the couch, cereal bowl just under his chin, scooping it in, glued to the telly. I rubbed my hair. It was so cold up in our bedroom I wanted the worst of the water off it before I went to dress, but the bathroom was so tiny and the window not even a foot square and
only opening six inches out at the bottom, that if I took my clothes in on a hanger like I used to in our real house they’d be damp for the rest of the day.

  “Angel awake?” I said.

  Marco gulped down a mouthful of milk. “I’ve left him sleeping. He put a note out saying he was taking another day off.”

  “And are you … ?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “I’ll make up for it at the weeken—” I began, but Marco had seen the TV picture change from the floods, still high at Carlisle, to a shot of the Abbey. He leaned forward and dinked the volume button up to drown me out.

  “ … match so far with missing persons records from the area, as the search widens. The cause of death has been confirmed as blunt force trauma to the back of the skull and the case is being treated as murder. There was no identification on the body. Preliminary examination suggests that this was not a vagrant. ‘This was a man who would be missed,’ said the chief investigating officer. However, only the belt buckle—” Here the picture changed to a shot of a silver-coloured Kangol buckle, like you could buy anywhere in the country. It was new and shiny and rested against a pale blue background, with a label underneath saying EXAMPLE. The voice was still droning on.

  “ … the zip from a pair of Asda’s own-brand jeans”—another picture of the top of a pair of jeans against that blue card; as if anyone needed to see what jeans looked like—“and part of the earpiece to a pair of spectacles”—no picture for this—“have survived the years underground.”

  The picture changed to a plainclothes standing outside the offices in Dumfries. He looked cold and tired. “The wire from the glasses is our big hope for identification. That and the dental work.” He huddled deeper into his coat collar as a squall of rain hit him side on. I tried to think when it must have been filmed to have caught weather like that. “We’re working with opticians to try to reconstruct the look of the complete pair of spectacles and we’re very hopeful that this might lead to an ID.”

  “Makes sense,” Marco said. “Every photo’s going to have his specs in it. Not like his belt or his fly.”

  Back in the studio the newsreader was staring out at us with the solemn look they keep for tragedy and then ditch for the weather five minutes later. “Police have asked for the public’s help in compiling a full list of males, aged twenty-five to forty-five at the time they went missing, between 1990 and 2010. Any additional photographs to add to missing-person documents already filed might be of value.”

  “Aye, right,” said Marco, stretching forward and dumping his bowl on the coffee table. “Damn sure the cops are dying for everybody’s aunty to go rootling through the photo album and come clogging up the office.” He pointed at the newsreader. “She’ll get her arse handed to her for that.”

  Lars and Hinny were full of it too.

  “What does that mean then, ‘not a vagrant’?” Hinny was saying when I ducked into the kitchen. It was only half-past seven and I needed one more cup of coffee to be ready for the “change.” It was starting to loom over me, I’d thought about it so much—telling myself after it I’d be up to speed and ready for anything.

  “That’s what I wondered,” said Lars. “A dirt-cheap pair of jeans he had on and how much would a Kangol belt set you back?”

  “Tenner?” said Hinny. “Maybe it’s his teeth. Veneers or posh crowns and that.”

  I shot a swift look at Lars to see if mention of good teeth and social standing might hurt his feelings. But he was shaking his head, his mind on the question and no sign of upset.

  “Aye, but anyone can hit the streets at any time,” he said. “Things I saw in the big wards in Glasgow, you wouldn’t believe. Guys still with their Beamer key rings, no keys on it, no car anymore, but they kept it to remind themselves what they’d had once.”

  “That’s tragic,” Hinny said. I was sure she looked at my bag as she spoke. My Coach bag that I’d got in the duty-free on our last trip to Orlando.

  “You know what I don’t understand,” I said, trying to move the conversation on. “How could somebody be killed and moved and buried and still have one of his specs legs hooked round his ear?”

  “Moved?” Lars said. “Have they let that out, like? Do they know it wasn’t done there where they found him?”

  “I just assumed,” I said. “I mean, it’s a public place. It doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Aye, but it’s digging a hole and filling it up that takes all the time,” said Hinny. “A bash on the head with a shovel’s the least of it.”

  I shook my head. I knew something about that bothered me and it wasn’t just the notion of it happening so close to where we lived. It was years ago and we hadn’t been there.

  Lars clicked his finger and winked at Hinny. “Genius,” he said. “That’s how come he’s still wearing half his specs, isn’t it? The blow from the shovel smashed them into the wound and then all the blood made them stick. Eh? Do you think?”

  “I don’t want to think,” said Hinny. “And Ali’s gone as white as a wee ghostie. Never mind him, hen.”

  “We’re getting late anyway,” Lars said. “Come and share the joy and love of the shift change, Ali. That’ll put you right.”

  “Is it okay to bring my coffee?” I said. I needed sugar as well as the caffeine now. My lips felt thick and numb from the blood leaving them.

  “Christ, aye,” said Hinny. “Dr. F practically wheels his in on a drip stand.”

  We met Marion coming downstairs, yawning and rubbing her face with the palms of her hand.

  “I know what it is,” I whispered to Lars as we waited outside Dr. Ferris’s office door. She was on the phone and held up a hand like a traffic cop to stop us trooping in. “Why I don’t think he was killed right there where they found him.”

  “Is this the bones in the monk house?” said Marion.

  “It’s because, what are the chances of having an argument that got out of hand and made you bash someone with a shovel exactly in a place where you could just start digging a grave? I mean, fights happen in pubs and carparks, don’t they? Not at historic monuments.”

  “Unless you asked the person to meet you there,” Hinny said. “Had it all planned, like.”

  “Or,” said Lars, “unless you had the shovel there for digging anyway and then you used it to kill him. Because that was bothering me too. Kind of handy, eh no? Getting away with just one tool for both jobs?”

  “But digging what, though?” I said. “You mean maybe it was two archeologists? People who were there officially? If a historian went missing actually from the site, they’d have ID’d him already, wouldn’t they? They’d have looked for him there and seen the earth disturbed right away.”

  “That’s actually—how didn’t they see it?” said Marion. “Someone. There’s tourists all over that place all the time.”

  “Depends on the time of year,” I said.

  “Leaf litter,” said Lars. “There’s letters in the News about the council works department every week. Leaves left in big piles, graves all dandelions. But never mind that. I didn’t mean Indiana Jones digging up monks—they don’t use shovels anyway, they scrape away with toothpicks. That’s how come it takes them so long. I was thinking of someone digging a grave to put a body in and someone strolling up and seeing it. Then bash bang wallop. Two graves instead of one. I’m surprised they’re not digging the whole place up, checking for more.”

  “Or maybe it’s a serial killer,” Marion said. “Yeah, you’re right. They should be checking.”

  It hadn’t even crossed my mind. One grave, one body—and Angelo’s phone mixed up in it all—was horrendous enough. Imagination had been silenced. That voice that had been dripping poison in my ear since the first positive pee-test (what if, but what if, but if you’re not careful) had for once been reduced to a grinning goblin just sitting on my shoulder, watching the show.


  “Don’t say that!” I said. “I live right across the road, you know. My front windows look right out at it. I’ll never sleep again.”

  “Is that right?” said Lars. “You stay in the row at Dundrennan?”

  “I was meaning to say, actually,” I began, “if anyone goes past, I’d chip in for petrol.”

  But Dr. Ferris was winding up her phone call, clicking her fingers at us to tell us to come in. “It’ll blow over, sweetheart. Don’t worry about it and don’t text everyone under the sun, for heaven’s sake. Everything dies eventually if you don’t feed it. I know. I know. But listen to your mother.” She smiled fondly at her desktop, listening to the quacking from the phone. “Urchin,” she said. “Wretched child. Home at the usual. Lots of love. Lots and lots.” And she hung up and clicked her phone a few times, turning it to mute.

  “My daughter, Dido,” she said to me. “The usual drama,” she said to the others, with a rueful smile around the room, as if asking all the parents to share the moment with her. I couldn’t get her words to stop echoing—everything dies eventually if you don’t feed it. It wasn’t my idea of comfort.

  More staff were filing in, but not many. I had thought on my visits that the life of Howell Hall was going on somewhere else, that I was managing to find the quiet corners. But was this it? Lars and Marion, four more nurses in different colour-coded uniforms that I couldn’t decipher, Hinny and another woman in the same white overall as hers, the two doctors, a man in a tracksuit who must be the physio. And me.

  “And we’re missing … Oonagh, and I’ve got a long string of texts from John,” Dr. Ferris was saying as I started listening again.

  “Who are they?” I said. It would be easy to sit schtumm, but I had promised myself I would be the squeaky wheel and leave the room feeling like I knew enough to get through the rest of the day.

  “Oonagh is Marion’s opposite number and John’s our current bank night nurse,” said Dr. F. I scribbled it down. Eight nurses, at least one hired by the shift from an employment agency. “And speaking of which, let’s do a round of introductions, shall we?”