by Clare Curzon
Alyson held out her hand for it. ‘No harm done, I suppose. It won’t have been missed yet. What did you want it for?’
‘As if you haven’t guessed! I was trying to find the sort of lock it fitted. And I did.’
‘Am I to be told?’
‘It’s for a safety deposit box, the portable kind. So naturally I’m curious about how this lad came to have anything of value that needed locking away.’
‘More than curious. You’re suspicious.’ Her tone was dry.
‘Wouldn’t you be?’
Further discussion was interrupted by the buzzer sounding from downstairs. This time, Alyson noted, Rachel Howard wasn’ t making use of any code revealed by Mr Fitt. She went through, asked for identification and pressed the button for the outer door release, then returned to the policewoman.
‘Don’t rush your tea. This will be someone to see my patient, Miss Withers.’ And she explained how this mystery relative had turned up on the previous day while she was at work.
She went out on the landing as the lift doors opened. Emily’s granddaughter, breathing her name and extending a gloved hand, came out wrapped to the ankles in a full-skirted black leather coat and with a collar of fox fur up round her ears. As Alyson disposed of the garment alongside Zyczynski’s she found Rachel Howard had preceded her into the lounge.
‘Ms Howard,’ she said coolly, following her and determined to be formal, ‘this is …’
‘Rosemary, Alyson’s friend,’ the policewoman put in quickly, avoiding further disclosure.
How’d you do,’ said the visitor casually. ‘Oh, you’re entertaining. How cosy.’ There was more than a hint of disapproval in her voice.
She ploughed on. ‘I met the other nurse yesterday, of course, but I felt I must see you too as the senior in charge. I admit he struck me as quite efficient, even though foreign, unfortunately.’
Alyson, seldom wrong-footed, had too much to deal with just then to find a ready comeback. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she managed to invite. ‘I’ll get some fresh tea.’
‘Coffee, actually. I do prefer that in the morning,’ and the woman seated herself opposite Zyczynski whose lively brown eyes appeared to be missing nothing.
Alyson escaped to the kitchen. When she returned she had a look of determination on her face. If the Howard woman intended to treat her as mere paid help, then there were a few things they should get straight between them.
‘I’ve been trying to work out,’ she said, setting down the tray in a space Zyczynski cleared on the low table, ‘exactly what you’d call the relationship between us. As granddaughters of two sisters, does that make us second cousins?’
Rachel paused in extracting a cigarette case from her crocodile handbag. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever considered it. There’s been no contact between the two branches. We hadn’t heard of you before Emily’s little solicitor produced you out of a hat.’
‘I can’t say there’s much family resemblance,’ Zyczynski murmured, earning a hard stare from the newcomer.
No, Alyson agreed silently; but what had shaken her from the first moment was the startling likeness between this woman and Emily. And more poignant was that she so resembled the treasured photograph of Alyson’s own mother. An older version with the same high cheekbones and dark eyes, though the blue-black of this one’s sweeping wings of hair must surely be artificial.
I don’t like her, Alyson had to admit. Already I find her quite detestable.
Rachel was about to light up.
‘Sorry,’ Alyson interrupted brusquely. ‘I don’t allow smoking near my patients.’
For a moment it seemed there’d be a freezing-out of the upstart employee. Then it passed. Rachel slid the case back in her handbag and crumpled the cigarette into a saucer. ‘Perhaps I’d better look in on Emily while my coffee cools. I can’t stay long. I’m getting an afternoon train back to Scotland.’
Which was disappointing. Alyson had so much to ask her. Escorting her to Emily’s bedroom, she said, ‘Gran seldom mentioned her older sister, but I know she missed her badly when she went away.’
Rachel halted. ‘Was thrown out when she went to the bad, you mean.’ She gave a little grunt of contempt. For whom? Alyson wondered. Or for what – convention?
‘She was seventeen. Told never to darken her righteous father’s doors again. Eunice, the bastard child, was my mother. At least when she grew up she managed to find herself a husband. Married well moneywise; but he was the real bastard!’
No doubt this time where the scorn was targeted. The elegant, sculpted face was vulpine with rancour.
Alyson could find nothing to say. She knocked gently on the bedroom door, looked round it to ensure Emily was covered up, and let her visitor in.
The old lady was awake, her emaciated, claw-like hands clutching the upper sheet. It was one of her more lucid moments. She took in the figure bending over her, seemed for a second almost to recall the face, then frowned with incomprehension. ‘No,’ she said, almost spitting. ‘You can’t have it. Go away!’
Her head turned and the familiar cry burst from her lips. ‘Martin, Dolly, get me out of here!’
‘Emily, it’s all right,’ Alyson comforted. ‘We aren’t staying.’
Outside in the passage, Rachel’s calm appeared ruffled. ‘Fitt never said she was as far gone as that. Alzheimer’s, I suppose.’
‘She’s just very old. And tired,’ Alyson defended. ‘There are things I wanted to ask you. These people she cries out for sometimes, who are they? Dolly or Molly, and Martin?’
‘My stepbrother and stepsister. Molly was their mother, my father’s first wife. He divorced her to marry Eunice, and legitimize me. But Molly stayed on, in a sort of ménage à trois.’ Again bitterness was back, destroying the cosmetic beauty of her face.
She stared at Alyson challengingly with her huge, dark eyes. ‘Emily doesn’t so much mean “get me out” as “let me out”. When we all lived together and she got cantankerous they used to shut her up in a cupboard. Martin and Dolly. As a small child I was treated even worse.’
‘That’s barbarous!’
‘They aren’t nice people. Eventually Fitt stepped in; got himself power of attorney for Emily. I hate to think what he’s milking off her estate. Both my parents had died by then.’
She shrugged, looking at her wristwatch. ‘Can I have my coat now?’
When Alyson saw her out there was no mention of a second visit. Dazed, she went back to clear the crockery and Rachel’s untasted coffee. She had forgotten the other woman still sitting there.
‘Did you get all that?’ she asked, sinking on to a chair beside her. Of course Zyczynski had. Rachel’s voice, with its ringing upper-class authority and precise Edinburgh diction, would clearly have reached her in the otherwise silent apartment.
The policewoman said nothing, nodding.
‘I wanted so much to meet her,’ Alyson admitted. ‘And now I heartily wish I hadn’t.’
Chapter Eight
Zyczynski cleared her immediate paperwork, clipped together the papers relating to the committal case she’d be attending in court next morning and knocked on Superintendent Yeadings’ open door.
‘Ah, Rosemary,’ he said, looking up. ‘I was thinking of sloping off home for lunch. Is there anything urgent?’
‘No, sir. Things are pretty quiet. DI Salmon’s got a dental appointment, so he told me to report direct to you. And Beaumont’s checking on our Misper’s son and daughter-in-law again. He’s sure they’re holding something back. It isn’t the first time the old chap’s disappeared without warning. A widower, he wasn’t happy about moving in with them.’
‘Um. Family trouble. There’s a lot of it about, unfortunately. And far too much of it lands on our plates these days.’
She guessed he was thinking about Dr Stanford’s wife. He and Nan were getting pulled into her affairs, and he’d enough mixed-up lives to deal with here at work.
‘There’s no end to it, is there?’ sh
e sympathized. ‘I ran into a funny little incident myself today. Involving a nurse I went to see about that young junkie I told you about yesterday.’
‘Oh yes. How is the lad?’
‘Looks as if he might recover. In which case we’ll need to do something about the debit card found on him.’
‘Yes. DC Silver’s traced it to a local man. The owner hadn’t realized he’d lost it, and he’s not best pleased that fifty pounds had been withdrawn.’
‘He was lucky it wasn’t more. Anyway the boy had blown most of it by the time he was found stoned.’
‘M’m, not surprising, given a drug dependency. See what you can do with him, Z. When he’s fit enough to open up.’
Do for him was what he really meant. Z nodded. ‘Alyson, this nurse I mentioned, may be better able to help there, if she’s not too tied up with getting Mrs Stanford to respond.’
‘Human, is she? You said she’d family complications too.’
So he hadn’t missed that point. ‘She’s caring for her late grandmother’s sister, who’s ninety-three and bedridden. The old lady has a history of what sounds like abuse from her nearer relatives and was apparently rescued from them by the family solicitor. Yesterday her granddaughter turned up out of the blue and started checking up on the lie of the land. She took the opportunity to cast doubt on the solicitor’s motives. The old lady’s wealthy and mentally adrift. I was there to overhear all this. Her visitor didn’t endear herself to me any more than she did to Alyson.’
‘The ITU nurse is acting carer in her spare time? That’s hardly recreational. Or expected.’ His tone became dry. ‘It doesn’t fit the modern pattern of hospital life we get from TV soaps. They mainly consist of serial bed-hopping between medical staff. Nan gets furious about the slights on her honoured profession.’
‘I guess Alyson’s one of the old school, sir.’
‘What age?’
‘Much like mine.’
Twenty-eight, then, Yeadings reckoned silently.
Z explained that the only time the girl got outdoors was on the walk between work and home, with occasional detours to get in the shopping. She didn’t even have a jogging habit. Probably got enough exercise from the double job.
‘So is the old lady left on her own during hospital shifts?’
‘No, there’s a care assistant comes in. And that’s another strange thing.’
She told Yeadings about the visitor’s reference to a male nurse, when the only other helper was actually a woman.
‘An emergency stand-in, perhaps? Or maybe the work’s being profitably hived off at a lower rate.’
‘Could be. But without Alyson’s knowledge or permission. She was mystified, but didn’t let on. The visitor had been mildly impressed by the man she’d seen on the previous day, and Alyson admitted to me that the real carer wasn’t much cop.’
‘Intriguing, but hardly within our remit.’
‘No. Still, I may find out more from her when I chase up the young junkie. Just to satisfy my curiosity.’
Yeadings smiled to himself, reaching for his coat off its peg in the stationery cupboard. Young Z had a nose for oddities, not unlike himself. Good, so long as she didn’t get herself personally involved. Wasn’t it Sartre who said Hell was other people? Or maybe Gide. One of those French depressives.
When the policewoman had left, Alyson was hard pushed to catch up with her self-imposed timetable. With Emily settled and out in her chair, the purees prepared and her bedding bundled up to drop off at the launderette, she rang Sheena’s home number and asked her to come in quarter of an hour early. There would be a cold lunch waiting for her in the fridge.
‘It’s not that easy,’ the woman balked.
‘It’s vital, Alyson insisted crisply. ‘We have something to discuss.’ She laid down the phone.
Sheena, uneasily aware of what in all likelihood her boss was going to make a fuss about, compromised by coming in just five minutes before her usual time. ‘Is it Emily?’ she demanded abruptly on entering. ‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘Emily’s as well as she ever is. I thought you should know that your visitor of yesterday came to see me this morning. She’d been quite impressed by the male nurse she found in charge. Can you explain that to me?’
‘Care assistant,’ Sheena quickly corrected her. ‘I was going to tell you, only all that about her claiming to be Emily’s granddaughter put it right out me head at the time. I had to pop out for something, see. Medicine for me Mum, and the chemist would be closed when I came off duty. Well, this man had been recommended and I’d met him socially, like. I thought, jest for fifteen minutes, see. I knew you wouldn’t want me leaving the old girl on her own. And as it happened he was free jest then. Anyway, as luck would have it – sod’s law, like – that’s when the granddaughter turned up and he let her in. So when I got back I let him get on with it and stayed out of sight. Didn’t want her getting the idea the place was over-staffed, and that old solicitor wasting the family’s money.’
She drew a long breath after the rushed explanation. Alyson didn’t need the expression of proud achievement in Sheena’s unnaturally round eyes to warn her that something had been put over on her.
‘I don’t see why this friend of yours – all right, acquaintance, then – couldn’t have picked up the prescription for you. You’re paid to be here, not bring in a substitute.’
‘You said that Rachel woman thought he was all right. And she seemed choosy enough. Did I tell you she let herself in downstairs? That solicitor must’ve told her the code. Probably sent her to check up on how we’re ripping them off. Only she could see we aren’t!’ She ended on a high note of triumph.
‘She didn’t need the code for the street door. Maybe someone was going out or coming in just ahead of her and she slipped by them. It does happen. I’ve done it myself, though the residents ought to be more alert to strangers. Did she attempt to let herself in up here?’
‘No. She rang.’
Presumably the male care assistant had reported this to her. He seemed responsible enough. ‘Give me his name, Sheena. If he’s suitable and available I might need to use him sometime as a stand-by.’
The woman hesitated. ‘He’s called Ramón. It’s Spanish.’
Alyson nodded. So probably an EU citizen; maybe he was looking for work locally. It would be worth paying him from her own pocket to get occasional time off. Provided he met requirements. She’d need to interview him.
‘Can you give me his phone number?’
Sheena looked aghast. ‘Er, I’d have to look it up.’
She thinks she’s in danger of getting the boot, Alyson thought. Well, let her. It may smarten up her performance.
Alyson went for the phone directory. Strike while the iron’s hot, she told herself. She watched while Sheena fumbled her way through the business section. It appeared the man hadn’t a private number.
Sheena ran a finger down a page and read out six figures. She looked up, her face flushed. ‘He’s taken a room at the Crown,’ she said. ‘While he looks around, like. You have to ring there and ask for Ramón. Don’t know the rest of his name.’
I’ll do that when I get my meal break at work, Alyson decided. Let’s hope it finds him in and free. He might just walk across and see me at the hospital. It’s just round a couple of corners. And convenient for here too, if he’s suitable to take on.
Her call caught him at the break in his split shift. There had been a sizable pause while someone hunted him down, but when he answered he listened quietly to her explanation of who she was.
‘I understand. The old lady. You look after her.’
‘She’s an elderly relative I’m very fond of. I want to be sure she’s cared for properly. If you would be interested in taking on that responsibility from time to time, and you’re not tied up with other commitments … Look, could you possibly come across to the hospital and see me in half an hour? I’ll arrange to be waiting in Reception on the ground floor.’
/> He hesitated only a few seconds. Then, ‘In half an hour,’ he agreed levelly.
Good. He wasn’t rushing into anything. Which was a responsible attitude. He could be a godsend.
She watched him walking up towards the plate-glass entrance: a small, stocky figure in a green parka, his bare head covered in black hair short and stiff as a clothes brush. There was something oriental about the set of his features. His square, flat face was impassive. She waited for him to reach Reception and ask for her. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Alyson Orme. Let’s find a corner where we can talk.’
He left it to her, waiting for her questions, then answering them slowly. Perhaps he lacked confidence in English, was short of vocabulary. But his pronunciation was good and he had no trouble in following what she said. Her main anxiety was that he wouldn’t be satisfied with occasional work if he was looking for something permanent.
‘Had you ever considered becoming a student nurse?’ she asked.
He looked a little embarrassed. His gaze rested on her uniform. ‘That’s not for me,’ he said simply.
She guessed he lacked the basic education to be accepted for training. ‘Well, care assistants have just as vital a part to play.’ She hoped it didn’t sound patronizing.
‘I give good service,’ he replied, quaintly.
‘Let’s arrange for you to take a duty when I’m there myself. Then I can show you where everything is and we’ll see how Emily takes to you. She can be a little trying at times, so you’ll need to be patient with her.’
He smiled then, showing large, very white teeth, and almost managing to look handsome. ‘I am very patient man.’ His face resolved back to its moon-smoothness.
‘Tomorrow perhaps? At eight in the morning?’
It was possible. He could arrange with Roseanne to set up the bar and he’d be back to relieve her as soon after midday as he could get away. He stood up and offered Alyson his hand. They had an agreement. It was some time later that she realised she hadn’t asked him for references.
Oliver Markham slammed his locker door and shook out the folds of his black gown, his badge of office. He was the only officer of the court to be visually distinguished as a dignitary. Even the beaks were in collar and tie – or, more often now, twin sets and pearls. This set him apart, sent a warning message to the lowlifes hauled up to account for their misdemeanours.
