by T W G Fraser
Bored
TWG Fraser
Copyright 2013 TWG Fraser
It was a scream that lasted only as long as it took for the woman's stomach to contract and hurl her breakfast back up the way it had come, forcing the woman onto her knees, and pushing the two slices of semi-digested toast over the carpet. Despite that, the woman was able to recognise a thought that had often popped up and had been developed regularly since about the age of five: the one about why white bread goes brown in your mouth so quickly, and about how, at school, all those years ago, the white sliced bread had actual been called 'Bred', nowhere on the packaging had it mentioned the word 'bread'.
She did manage not to wet herself but it was a close call and down, really, to her years of experience and a naturally stern temperament. But as the woman fell, the weight of her body slammed the door against the dividing wall of Ms York and Ms Ludlum's flats.
Neither the scream nor the noise of the slamming door woke Ms York, it was the vibrations of the fall that spread out each way along the wall, racing round the little flat and finally rattling the bedhead and disturbing Ms York's one working hand where it lay against the bed.
Though it took a full minute to open her eyes, Ms York's brain was up to speed in an instant, taking in what little bits of information her senses could give her.
She opened her eyes. Her jaws widened but her lips stayed glued together with saliva dried on them during the last twelve hours of unuse; sleeping or just bored watching soundless television. Her skin stretched white over her chin as she struggled to open her mouth, until, with a velcro rip, they split revealing the pink toothless cavity of her ancient mouth. Her small body visibly inflated as she took her first full breath of the morning.
"Bugger it!" She whispered. "The old cow's gone!"
Realising she had little time to witness the success of her friend, she decided to get up and nip next door before the police arrived.
*
Nurse Mapledish retched again but nothing came out. She coughed and spat onto the floor but stayed on her hands and knees, trying to pull herself together. The curtains were still drawn so she could not be sure ... she lifted one of her hands off the carpet: it was black with semi-congealed blood. Her lungs automatically started to fill with air for another scream; this time she held it in.
"No." She croaked. "No Mavis, you will not. Think of the old dears, you'll only..," she paused, "fucking scare them."
Despite the mess already on her hand she did not want to put it back on the floor and, in fact, quickly lifted the other off the ground too. Then, waving her hands in the air so as not to touch anything with them, she leant against the wall and tried to stand by pushing herself up with her legs. Unfortunately though, a foot slipped out from under her and, still trying to avoid using her hands, the side of her face went down into the thickly bloodied carpet.
She struggled back up again. The dark blood had now smudged up her skirt and onto her blouse.
"Like a Friesian fucking cow." She muttered. "Why did I pick today to forget to change my sodding shoes?"
It was true, her daily workwear for ten years, the regulation pair of white rubber-soled nursing shoes sat happily in Nurse Mapledish's locker in the office as if aware that today things could get a bit messy. Instead, on her feet were the now ruined pair of smoothly leather-soled pumps her friend Jayne had given her.
"Bollocks and buggery." said Nurse Mapledish and in a belated attempt to save her shoes, pushed herself out of the flat onto the tiled floor of the passageway outside, her body slipping easily along on her bloody knees.
She stood up and locked the door. There were no signs of life coming from any of the other five flats on that floor.
"But amongst this lot, that means nothing." She said, eyeing the other doors warily. She could almost see the wrinkled bodies wriggling and crawling into life. She knew she didn't have much time before they erupted from their dark holes like maggots.
"Calm down, Mavis." She told herself, taking off her shoes to avoid leaving anymore blood on the tiles. "I didn't think she had so much in her."
Nurse Mapledish tip-toed back to her office.
*
Ms York did not hear Nurse Mapledish leaving. She had her feet off the bed now but was being held up by an argument raging in her head: should she put on her dressing gown and go next door immediately and risk being caught by the police in her nightie and slippers or dress quickly and risk not getting in at all once the police arrived?
Pride and a worry about cleanliness got the better of her - she couldn't cope with the idea of blood on her bed clothes.
"I'm far too old for that sort of hoo-ha." Her vocal chords were somewhat shocked by their sudden use so the actual sound that came out was really only an approximation of the sentence. Still, there was nobody there to hear it anyway, and there hadn't been for fifty years. She decided to get dressed. "But quickly now, quickly."
Her good arm started its finger-powered crawl across the bed towards her clothes-covered chair.
*
"Sir, we've got a call from the granny-farm on Dulvet Road. I think someone's died."
"Well that's hardly news is it?" Replied Inspector Cord, switching off his end of the intercom. But the Sergeant was persistent if a little dense. The intercom clicked back to life. (It was actually a baby monitor installed by a previous inspector in an attempt to save money, or maybe it had just been a basic dislike of internal telephone systems, either way, it had been installed the wrong way round so that the front office had the parental controls and could interrupt him whenever they felt like it. This was one of the many things Cord wanted to change but, after four years in the office, had still failed to do.)
"No Sir, she's dead when she's not supposed to be. Seemingly there's lots of blood. There's a nurse on the 'phone."
Inspector Cord sighed and put his lemon tea down. He hated the stuff anyway, he preferred mineral water but the Superintendent had hinted, strangely enough in the loo, that the men 'were talking' about the lack of coffee mugs and ashtrays on Cord's desk. It was an image thing that reassured the public. Cord was a happily married man but he'd always thought that he might have liked to have been a woman - they had an easier time of things, he felt.
Still, blood is blood and he had better take the call.
"All right Sergeant, put them through." Nurse Mapledish came on the line. "How can I help? My name is Inspector Cord."
"And my name is Nurse Mapledish," replied the nurse, sitting at her office desk with one leg in the air, trying to decide whether the shoe was ruined or not. "From the Centenarian Slumberdown Haven, on Dulvet Road. I believe there's been a murder committed in one of our flats, a Ms Ludlum."
"I've called an ambulance." She added.
"Good, good." Said Inspector Cord, also not really concentrating. He was trying to decide whether Nurse Mapledish had an easier life than him. "And, er, why do you think there's been a murder, did you see a body?”
"Well, no I didn't actually see a body, or a bit you might call a body, well, apart from the blood, and her head I suppose."
"Her head?"
"I think it was her head, the bathroom door was only open a little you see, but yes, it did look like her, in the toilet."
"You mean, actually in..?"
"Yes, in."
Inspector Cord spun in his chair and looked out the window.
"Do you think she knew any sailors?" He said it half to himself.
"I'm sorry?" asked Nurse Mapledish, she had not been listening, she was wondering what Jayne would think if she dyed the shoes a darker colour, but she'd only been given them the week before and was worried that the sudden change in colour might be noticed or wors
e, cause offence.
"Yes, quite, I'll get some men round right away. If you could stop anybody going into the flat at present." Continued Cord .
“Present?" Repeated the Nurse, she had always found policemen very boring.
"Presently." Said Cord. "And thank you."
She put the telephone down on its cradle.
"Arsehole." They said simultaneously. They both meant the Inspector.
He had put the telephone down as quickly as possible, knowing that there were quite a few official things he should have said, but had not felt like saying. Still it was nice to be getting out of the office even for a headless O.A.P.
He picked up his cap and headed off to the frontdesk.
"Sergeant!" He shouted.
*
Various alarms were flashing on the wall of the Nurses' Office. Nurse Mapledish watched them for a minute, her tongue rummaging around in her mouth looking for bits of bacon caught in her teeth.
"Mavis!" Shrieked a voice at the door. "What have you got on your shirt?"
It was Junior Nurse Scroop, having just arrived to start her shift.
“Oh I spilt some old paint on me in Will's Cupboard."
Will was the janitor and anything could happen in his cupboard, it was an easy lie.
"Look," continued Nurse Mapledish,"could you nip round the first and third floors, I'll do the second, but I've got to change first. The paint tin may have woken them up a bit. Just calm them down and I'll be round in a minute.”
"Rightee-ho." Said Nurse Scroop, giving a quick knowing smile and a nod at the alarms. "Just look at them all."
She went out. Nurse Mapledish walked over to her locker and pulled out her spare set of clothes, with a quick grunt as she saw her nursing shoes, and got changed.
*
Putting on a pair of tights is very difficult if one of your blasted hands doesn't work properly, you have to wriggle and pull and slowly slide off the bed onto your feet (which, thankfully work in a standing kind of a way, if not actually walking,) and then...oh bugger, I've got a pair on already!
Ms York hated getting up. She knew a lot of women in the building didn't even bother going to bed properly now, not undressing anyway. She was starting to sympathise with the whole idea.
"And who's going to notice the smell anyway?" She decided to leave the second pair of tights on.
"No time." She said sipping at a cup of tea in between attaching bits of clothing to her sagging frame. "Come on, come on."
When she finally had her cardigan on she reached out for her wheelchair and pulled it towards her. This was the most difficult maneuver for her: spinning her body round so that she could collapse onto the seat. She bent down and put the brake on and then started the slow shuffle that would turn her body a quarter turn in just under three minutes.
When she was at the right angle she collapsed down into the seat. The air exploded from her mouth as her back bounced off the rear support of the chair. Then she noticed that she had forgotten to put on a skirt.
"Oh damn, damn, blast and damn! I'm not bloody waiting."
She dragged a blanket from off her bed and wrapped it around her waist and legs. She flicked the brakes off and started turning the righthand wheel and headed for the door.
Soon she was heading away from the door. She stopped pushing the right wheel and flicked the left brake on and reversed until she was pointing a fair distance from the other side of the door. She flicked the brake off again and started pushing. Her record for getting out of her flat was four minutes, and that included opening the door.
*
The front doorbell rang. Nurse Mapledish looked up from tying her shoe-laces and saw Nurse Scroop come into the office.
"I'll get it." Said the junior nurse, turning to go back out.
"No, no, its OK, I'll go, I know who it is." Said Mapledish. "Could you do the medecine trays today, I've got a bit on this morning."
She handed Nurse Scroop the medicine cupboard key. "If you leave the trays for the second floor I'll take them up in a minute. Thanks."
"No problem." Nurse Scrope disappeared into the medicine cupboard and Nurse Mapledish headed round to the front door.
“Good morning Officers," she said unlocking the door, "are you Inspector Cord?"
"No Ma'am, Officers Murray and James from the Bombay Street station, but Inspector Cord's on his way, we've just been told to secure the area."
“Secure it? With what? Oh do come in, we're letting the heat out." She stood back and let the officers walk in.
"Just to make sure the crime scene isn't tampered with and ensure the perpetrator or perpetrators are not still about. Is this the way?" The first officer pointed up the stairs.
"Yes, yes, go right up, second floor, last door, secure away." She waved a hand towards the staircase. At which point Cord arrived so they all walked up the stairs together.
Cord had introduced himself, but had not really known what to say after that. The nurse was not what he had imagined she would be like and it annoyed him that however hard he tried to sharpen his abilities to make judgements about people using only the smallest bits of information possible he still found that invariably he was completely wrong. She was younger, taller, and prettier and just did not look like a lesbian.
Just as they reached the door of Ms Ludlum's flat, Nurse Mapledish raised her arm to point at the door. Officer Murray stopped in front of her and turned back to Cord.
"This is the door, sir." He said.
Mapledish lowered her arm and smiled to herself.
"I must see to the other ladies on this floor." She turned and headed off.
"Right you are, er, Nurse Mapledish," said Inspector Cord, "we'll call you if we need anything. OK. Murray, open it up."
"Its locked, sir," said Officer Murray, his hands sliding over the crisping blood left by Mapledish on the door handle, "shall we open it, Sir?"
Murray looked at Officer James with a lets-batter-the-door-down kind of a look.
"No, no, no, just get after Nurse what's-her-name and get the key, oh, and watch out for that blood on the floor there, could be important."
The two men pretended to inspect the passageway until Murray reappeared. Then they all watched the door being unlocked. Murray pushed the door open. The thin curtains let in some light but not enough. Cord put his hand out against the wall and found the light switch, it had a sort of a big blind-aid switch attached to it. He pressed it and saw that it was, in fact, a finger sellotaped to a normal fitting.
"Oh dear." He said and looked round the room. It took time to spot each individual aspect of the killing. The head was in the loo, but not the eyes; they were taped to the front of the television. An ear lay on one end of the telephone handset, with two pink things laid across the other end.
"Lips?" Said Officer James."Are they lips?"
Two legs, or rather the knees to the feet stood upright against a cushioned armchair, the feet in slippers. A hand, clutching a mug, rested on one of the arms of the chair.
Murray took a step forward and all three looked down at their feet when they heard the suctioned ripping sound come from under his shoe as he lifted it.
“Oh God," whispered Cord, and all three left the room, "I think we're going to need boots."
He looked at James, who was fairly pale.
"Nip down to my car and get my boots will you, and keep the ambulance men away for a minute or two. Murray, get on the radio and get the full team up here, I think we're going to need some help, but stay here, I'm just going to have a word with the Nurse."
Inspector Cord and Officer James walked away down the passage. Cord stopped at the flat he had seen Nurse Mapledish enter, he tapped at the door and stepped inside. Officer James carried on to the staircase and went down.
Murray glanced quickly inside Ms Ludlum's flat and then began walking slowly down the passage while talking into his radio.
*
Ms York pulled her door open and looked out. S
he couldn't see anybody. With years of practise behind her, she wheeled out of her door pumped frantically on the right wheel and in one tight semi-circle she was inside the door of Ms Ludlum's flat. Slowly she moved across the floor eyeing the gory details with considerable relish. Four curving lines were drawn by the wheelchair across the crusting carpet. Luckily for her she had one of those chrome bars round the outside of her wheels for pushing so her hands did not get messy.
She saw Ms Ludlum's other hand wrapped round the paint roller on the floor by the bedroom door. The paint tray still had blood in it despite most of it being evenly spread across the floor.
She started to giggle as she tried to head for the bedroom, anticipating the sight on the bed. She and Ms Ludlum had picked the lingerie together.
Outside the door of the flat Officer Murray felt his body go icy cold and his pants strangely warm. He was looking at the old woman's head in the toilet and could hear it giggling. He yelled.
Nurse Mapledish and Inspector Cord ran out of the flat and saw Murray leaning against the door. The two of them ran up and re-entered Ms Ludlum's flat. Ms York was just going through the door into the bedroom.
They could hear her whispering to herself and laughing.
"No you don't Jean, you bad girl." Said Nurse Mapledish catching hold of the two handgrips at the back of the chair. The old woman shut up. The nurse pulled her out of the doorway, turned her round and started pushing her out of the flat. Mapledish smiled at Cord.
"They're unbelievable aren't they?" She pushed the woman back into her own flat. Cord watched, not saying a word. After a few seconds he noticed his mouth was open so he shut it. Mapledish returned.
"Sorry about that, Officer Murray, they can be quite tricky sometimes." She came back into the room. "Well, Inspector, shall we go see?"
She took his arm and led him into the bedroom.
"You know, I can check, but doubt any of them have had a visitor in twenty years."
*
Ms York finished dialling and picked up the telephone. She watched the bulb flashing on the telephone base unit, when it stopped flashing she began speaking. (When the bulb stopped flashing it meant it was time to speak but she had no way of knowing if there was somebody there, that was one of the many problems with being so deaf.)
