by Cleeves, Ann
‘How did she seem?’
‘Worried. Upset.’
He was daunted by the task ahead of him. ‘It’s a huge hospital,’ he said. ‘ She could have gone anywhere.’
‘Oh, no,’ Emily said. ‘ I don’t think so. You see if she was going to one of the other departments she would have gone outside. This building is quite self-contained. But she didn’t. She went through that door over there.’
She nodded towards the door which led into the rest of the building.
Hunter looked at the old lady curiously. She seemed to find the exchange amusing, as if she were playing some sort of game with him. It must be her age, he decided. Or her illness.
As they stared at the door a radiographer in a white tunic walked through and called out a list of names. Mrs Bowman was the last on the list. She stood up slowly and followed two old men through the door. Hunter went after them.
The building was organised along a series of long corridors with intersections at right angles like an American street plan. The three patients had disappeared. Hunter walked along a spotless corridor past rows of shut doors. There was the faint hum of machinery and suddenly the incongruous sound of uninhibited laughter which only added to his unease.
He was looking for some senior administrator who might publicise Dorothea’s presence in the hospital and ask for witnesses, but he felt unable to knock at one of the closed doors to ask for help. There were frightening symbols indicating radioactivity and implying that all visitors without detailed scientific knowledge should stay away. He wandered on hoping to find a reception area or to meet someone not wearing a white coat. He came at last, with some relief, to a plump woman in a uniform overall who moved a huge polisher from side to side across the linoleum tiles.
‘Excuse me!’ he shouted.
She pushed a button with her foot and the polisher whirred to a stop. He took a photograph of Dorothea Cassidy from his pocket.
‘This woman was a visitor here yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘Did you see her?’
She leaned on the polisher, grateful for an excuse to stop work, and looked carefully at the photograph.
‘No,’ she said regretfully. ‘Sorry. But if she was a visitor she would have gone upstairs. That’s where the wards are.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I thought everyone came here as out-patients.’
‘No, some of them are very poorly and have to stay in.’ She showed him to the lift then reluctantly started the machine and continued her work.
In Hastings Ward it was the calm, quiet time of early afternoon. All the activity of the morning was over and the patients had finished lunch. In the main room eight elderly women dozed on their beds. It was hot and the flowers on the bedside cabinets drooped. Staff Nurse Imogen Buchan sat in the office and hoped that now she would have time to collect her thoughts and banish the panic which had overwhelmed her for two days. She knew she would have to come to a decision quickly. There was danger in this delay, and confusion, and there was not only herself to consider.
But almost as soon as she had sat down behind the desk the student nurse appeared, swinging insolently on the door, demanding her attention.
‘Can you come and talk to Mrs Peters?’ the student said. ‘She’s the one that had the implant yesterday. She’s suddenly decided that she’s claustrophobic and can’t possibly spend four days in that room.’ She touched the side of her head with her forefinger and raised her eyebrows. ‘ Neurotic cow.’
Imogen looked at the student with disapproval but said nothing. She walked along the corridor to the patient’s cubicle. The student had disappeared, probably to the cloakroom for a sneaky cigarette. Mrs Peters’s door was open but the space was blocked by a heavy lead screen, shoulder high, a protection against radioactivity. At one time Imogen would have ignored the screen, gone past it to sit on the bed and take the woman’s hand in an attempt to calm her. But today she stood in the corridor and looked across to the woman who lay moodily on top of the bed. The patient was in her early fifties, well groomed, articulate. She reminded Imogen strikingly of her mother. Her nightdress was open at the neck and Imogen could see the radioactive wire, held in place by brightly coloured beads, which was being used to treat the scar that remained after surgery.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said, her voice high and hysterical. ‘I would never have agreed to this if I’d known what’s involved. I’m so bored I could scream. It’s like being a prisoner. I never could stand being shut in.’
For a split second there was a glorious possibility that Imogen would lose her temper. She wanted to scream back at the woman and tell her that she was self-centred, egotistical, self-dramatising. But she maintained her precarious self-control. She had lost her temper with Dorothea Cassidy and that had been a disaster.
She spoke to the woman soothingly. She said Mrs Peters had to stay where she was for the safety of the other patients and the staff. Soon it would all be over. The woman relaxed, reassured by the attention.
‘I’ve been so silly,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Imogen said, under her breath, as she returned to the office.
Hunter stepped out of the lift into bright sunshine and felt immediately happier. He was faced by an empty day room and an open door into an office where a staff nurse was writing. All the ill people were decently out of sight. The nurse looked up and gave him an impatient professional smile. She was pretty in a pale, washed-out way. She should use more make-up, he thought. It would make all the difference. He smiled back at her and glanced automatically to the hand on the desk to see if she was wearing a wedding ring. He had always fancied women in uniform.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
Too right, he thought. There’s a lot you could do for me.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I’m Gordon Hunter from Northumbria Police. We’re trying to trace the movements of a woman. She was in this building yesterday and may have come to visit one of the patients on your ward.’
As he approached her he could see that she looked very tired. The skin under her eyes was bruised and strained.
‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked.
‘She was found murdered in Prior’s Park early this morning,’ he said. ‘I expect you’ll have heard about it.’
She shook her head. ‘ No. How terrible! I was on an early shift this morning and I didn’t know.’ There was no emotion in her voice and he supposed that nurses, like policemen, were accustomed to sudden death.
He set the photograph in front of her. It was a recent picture of Dorothea, taken by her husband. She was sitting at her desk, rather serious, as if she had been disturbed while working. Hunter watched the nurse glance down at it. She suddenly turned very pale and he realised that she must be exhausted. It was a bloody shame, he thought, that nurses were so over-worked. How could a man persuade one to go out with him if she was dead on her feet.
‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t recognise her. But she might have been on the ward yesterday afternoon. I don’t see all the patients’ visitors. We’re very flexible about visiting here. Some of them have to travel long distances. They come and go pretty much as they please.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see.’ He was tempted to ask her if she was busy tonight, if she felt like a Chinese meal and a few drinks, but he could tell there would be little point.
‘Were there any other nurses on the ward yesterday?’ he asked.
‘Of course. But none of them are here now. I swapped my shift.’
‘What about domestics?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, apparently not very interested. ‘You could ask the supervisor.’
‘Doctors?’
‘I think Rosie Stewart, the registrar, was here. But she’d have nothing to do with the visitors.’
It was a wild goose chase, he thought. Just as he’d anticipated.
‘I’ll have to get the photograph circulated,’ he said. ‘ If she was here someone must have se
en her. Who should I ask about that?’
She pointed him back down the stairs, pleased, he thought, to be left alone to her work in the sunshine.
When Hunter returned to the waiting room Annie Ramsay and Emily Bowman were there, sitting together against one wall, drinking tea from polystyrene cups. The room was almost empty now and the WRVS ladies were clearing up and counting the money from the till. The nurse behind the desk was reading a romantic magazine. When he came in through the door Annie Ramsay jumped up and waved to him though it would have been impossible for him to miss them.
‘That’s good timing,’ she said brightly. ‘Mrs Bowman’s just come out of her treatment, haven’t you, hinnie? We’ll finish our tea and then we can be off.’ She looked at Hunter with her small and curious eyes. ‘Did you have any luck?’
He grunted non-committally and shuffled his feet to show that he was a busy man and wanted to be away.
‘No,’ Annie Ramsay said, ‘ I didn’t think you would.’ She turned to Emily Bowman and added with malice and enjoyment: ‘Such a pity our Stephen couldn’t come. I say there’s nothing to beat experience.’
She helped Emily to her feet and imperiously sent Hunter to fetch the car.
Upstairs on the ward, Staff Nurse Imogen Buchan left the office, locked herself in the lavatory and was violently sick. She ran the tap to hide the noise she was making, then washed her hands and began to splash water over her face. When she returned to the office the student was there, leaning against the desk. On seeing Imogen she began talking in a bored, complaining way about her boyfriend. He was so jealous, she said. She only had to look at another man and he was furious. You’d think he intended to kill her. Imogen sent her back on to the ward with menu cards and closed the door.
She knew the number of St Mary’s Vicarage, Otterbridge, without having to look it up and dialled with trembling fingers. Outside people were starting to arrive for the afternoon’s visiting and she realised she could be disturbed at any time, yet still she kept the receiver to her ear and prayed that someone would reply.
Please, she pleaded to herself. It can’t be true. Let there be some mistake.
But when she left the hospital at the end of her shift there were pictures of Dorothea Cassidy on every noticeboard. The woman’s eyes seemed to be following her down the corridor, making Imogen feel that even after her death there was no escape from her.
Chapter Nine
When Ramsay had first come to Otterbridge to work he had been surprised that such a prosperous town should tolerate an estate like the Ridgeway. Surely, he thought, the rate payers would demand that it be tidied up, that the graffiti be removed. But although the Ridgeway residents’ association did their best they had little power and the estate was invisible to the rest of the town. There were no through-roads and the only glimpse the more affluent residents of Otterbridge had of it was from the train and even then the houses were hidden by the old cars and decaying furniture which had been tipped down the embankment.
Hilary Masters drove on to the estate without comment. Outside the community centre a small crowd was gathered to watch the decoration of a lorry for the carnival parade that evening. The theme for the event was Otterbridge, Ancient and Modern, and there were people trying on peculiar tunics which Ramsay thought were supposed to be Roman togas. The scene was chaotic, good-humoured. It was school lunchtime and an elderly lollipop man leaned on his stick and watched them drive past. In the playground boys defied the heat and chased after a football. On every corner there was a scruffy ice-cream van and through the open car windows Ramsay could hear the conflicting tunes of their chimes. Outside the houses women sat on the pavements and chatted. They took no notice of Hilary’s smart new car. They were used to social workers in the Ridgeway.
Theresa Stringer’s garden came as something of a shock. The grass was brown and straggly through lack of water, like all the others in the street, but there was a pond, with a concrete bridge across it and a pair of gnomes with fishing rods.
‘That’s Joss Corkhill’s influence,’ Hilary said. ‘ He probably dreamed it up after a night at the pub and spent hours building it. He’s like a kid.’
The front door of the house was open and Ramsay could see a hall with bare floorboards leading to a small kitchen. There, Theresa Stringer and her son sat at a painted wooden table eating chips from newspaper. Ramsay recognised the teenager who had been lurking in the Armstrong House garden when he went to see his aunt.
Hilary stopped on the doorstep and called in, ‘Theresa, it’s me, Miss Masters. Can we come in?’
Theresa Stringer left the table and walked down the hall to meet them. She was tiny, as slight and slim as a ten-year-old. She wore a T-shirt dress in red and black Dennis-the-Menace stripes. Her hair was dark and short and she wore bright red plastic earrings. There was something of the hyperactive child about her. She seemed restless, perpetually on the move. But she was not stupid. That was clear to Ramsay from the start and her bright intelligence surprised him. He had expected her to be more of a victim. She regarded Hilary aggressively.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘ I thought Mr Peacock was coming today.’ Then: ‘What have you done with my Beverley? I thought you were my friend. How could you let them take her away?’
‘Beverley’s fine,’ Hilary said gently. ‘I phoned the foster parents before I came out. They say she had a good night’s sleep and she’s settling in well. They’re taking her to the beach later today.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Theresa said. ‘ I can’t afford things like that for the bairn.’
‘She can be home on Monday,’ Hilary Masters said, ‘ if you give up that crazy idea of going away with Joss.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Theresa cried. ‘ I love him.’
There was an intimacy between the women which was more like friendship than the professional relationship between social worker and client. They had nothing superficial in common but they spoke to each other honestly, as equals. Again Ramsay was surprised. He felt he had misjudged Hilary completely.
‘Do you?’ Hilary said. ‘It would never work.’
‘How do you know?’ Theresa demanded. ‘You don’t even know him. You won’t give it a chance.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hilary said. ‘ We have to talk to you. Can’t we come in?’
Theresa shrugged and moved away from the door to let them into a living room. There was a square of carpet in the middle of the floor, a sofa and a television, but no other furniture. Despite that the room had a cluttered and claustrophobic feel. There were magazines on the floor, toys in a blue plastic washing basket in the corner. On one wall was a replica poster for Barnum’s Circus, on another an Irish Tourist Board print of mountains and sea. In a small, round glass bowl on the mantelshelf three goldfish swam listlessly.
‘Joss brought those back for Beverley from the fair,’ Theresa said. ‘She loved them.’ She pointed suspiciously at Ramsay. ‘Who’s he?’
‘This is Inspector Ramsay,’ Hilary said. ‘He wants to ask you some questions.’
‘Why?’ Theresa demanded, suddenly frightened. ‘I told you, Joss didn’t touch her, I was here all the time.’
‘This isn’t about Joss,’ Hilary said quickly. ‘ Not now. The inspector’s here to talk to you about Mrs Cassidy.’
‘What’s Dorothea been up to?’ Theresa said. ‘Been arrested, has she, for not paying her poll tax? She said it was unfair and she wasn’t going to pay.’
‘Didn’t Clive tell you?’ Hilary said, shocked. ‘Mrs Cassidy’s dead.’
‘No,’ Theresa said, shaking her head slowly. ‘He didn’t say a thing.’
‘Mrs Cassidy was found murdered early this morning in Prior’s Park,’ Ramsay said formally. ‘We’re making inquiries about her movements yesterday. I understand that she was here?’
But Theresa was unable to reply. She flung herself on to the sofa and began to cry. Ramsay watched the thin blades of her shoulders move under the cotton dre
ss. Hilary went over to the sofa and began to stroke her hair away from her face, until she sat up abruptly.
‘Who killed her?’ she asked. ‘Who was it?’
‘We don’t know,’ Ramsay said. ‘Not yet. That’s why I’m here. Are you well enough to answer some questions?’
Theresa nodded.
‘Was she here yesterday afternoon?’
‘It was about dinnertime,’ she said.
‘Why did Mrs Cassidy come to see you?’
‘She promised she would,’ Theresa replied quickly. ‘She said as soon as the case conference was over she’d come and tell me what had happened.’ She looked angrily at Hilary. ‘Mrs Cassidy was on my side. She didn’t want Beverley taken away.’
‘Theresa!’ Hilary said quietly. ‘I’m on your side. You know that.’
Ramsay ignored the interruption and continued: ‘Why did Mrs Cassidy come and not your social worker?’
‘Mr Peacock, the social worker, came with her,’ Theresa said. ‘In his own car but at the same time. He came to collect Beverley.’ She paused and Ramsay expected another outburst of tears but surprisingly she smiled. ‘He didn’t like coming here on his own,’ she said mischievously. ‘He was frightened of Joss when he’d been drinking. Mrs Cassidy wasn’t frightened of anything.’
‘So Mr Peacock came to take Beverley to the foster parents and Mrs Cassidy stayed here to talk to you?’
Theresa nodded.
‘What did you talk about?’
Theresa looked to Hilary Masters for reassurance and then answered with jerky bursts of speech.
‘She wanted to know about everything,’ she said. ‘Mrs Cassidy was that kind of woman. All questions. When she first came here to see Clive, I thought she was one of those nosy do-gooders. What does she want to come up here for? I thought. Why mix with the likes of us? She’s not even paid for it. But she was canny. She wasn’t how I expected.’ She paused but Ramsay said nothing. He hoped to recreate his image of Dorothea from these incoherent ramblings.
There were footsteps on the pavement outside and Theresa jumped up and looked out.
