by Clare Curzon
He knew it annoyed her, just as he knew he’d find the work faultless. Nevertheless caution was an ingrained habit, and she’d been with the firm long enough by now to appreciate that he couldn’t really help it.
There were eight outgoing letters, the final three almost identical and addressed to members of the Howard family. Martin, Rachel and Dolly, née Howard but now Shields, were advised that any approach to Miss Emily Howard should be by appointment only and made through the offices of Callendar, Fitt and Maltravers. Access would otherwise not be forthcoming.
It was blunt. It was firm. No point in being anything else with such a questionable set of people.
Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t such a bad face, Markham considered, slanting the shaving mirror as he turned one flat, razored cheek towards what morning sunlight stabbed through a crack in the overcast sky. He overlooked the red streaks in his eyes that showed up the washed-out blue of his iris. They were just temporary. There were a few deeper lines than when he’d last examined himself so thoroughly.
Any indication of his freshly liberated libido? He practised a scowl. Impressive. That was the new line: dominance. Watch out; this is a hard man.
He hadn’t meant to smile then, and the rictus startled him. Still, impressive; that as well. Even dangerous.
Monday couldn’t come soon enough. The new job, the challenge. And in the meantime two whole, yawning days to fill. Of course there was the Lump. He dismissed a brief image of the pudgy, unlovely face, slack-lipped and framed by the nondescript, pale hair, the elephant legs. No way a welcome exercise for the eyes.
What had mattered was the humping, all she was good for: the enormous relief of tension, the sense of vindication. He knew he would be going back there, taking her again, seizing control to the full. She would be there for him and willing. But there was no immediate hurry.
Maybe next time he’d catch her leaving the building, give her a lift. So, to be boy-scout ready, he’d throw his old tartan rug in the back of the Nissan. Stop off somewhere quiet. With the engine still running, he’d have her strip off. The satisfaction of flesh against flesh, slippery with sweat. No clumsy fumblings with elastic and straps.
And in the meantime? Reward himself for the bold new moves in his life. Look at some cars? Think about something more eye-catching, in silver perhaps. A three-year old with low mileage. Not that he’d necessarily be buying right now, just surveying the market. He’d need to do something about the Nissan, spruce it up to get a reasonable exchange rate.
At present there was a rare kerb space almost opposite his one-bedroom flat. He was still using the council car park because nobody had thought to snatch back the electronic admission card. He went out to the back yard and routed behind the dustbins for the traffic cone he’d picked up a couple of months back. He dumped it outside to keep the space free, then set out on foot to retrieve his car and give it a bit of a sponge-off.
But that was when they spotted him and demanded the entry card back. Sourly he drove back and started a vigorous overhaul.
It was some weeks since he’d even emptied the boot and now he made a good job of it, working himself into an almost enjoyable sweat, squirting the interior with kitchen cleaner and polishing everywhere with an old shirt. He used two buckets of soap suds outside on bodywork and windows, finishing with a final slosh of clean water to rinse the whole thing off. The bloody thing had never looked better, even the day he bought it, five years back. Good enough to let it be seen when he did a tour of the Saturday second-hand market on waste ground down by the river. After that he’d have to find somewhere else to park it.
Indoors again, he made himself an instant coffee, drinking it standing at the sink, ready to leave in overcoat and gloves. As a last-minute thought he dug out his cheque book for the Halifax Building Society. You never could tell. Maybe he’d see just the bargain he was looking for.
DS Rosemary Zyczynski was late quitting her bed because there were only thirty pages left to read in the library book she meant to return that morning. She’d taken one look at the overcast sky, thanked heaven it was a free day, and taken her breakfast of cereal and coffee back to the warmth of bed. When the call came from Moura of the Drugs Squad she stuck a finger in as bookmark while she took the message.
Geordie Moffat had come up with a possible name for the OD case in ITU. The boy was a Micky Kane, a Londoner only recently arrived. He wasn’t skin-popping, was a beginner on smack, ‘just to keep out the cold’. Quite a toff in a way, Geordie considered, but a bit out of his depth.
Z thanked her. ‘Your snout certainly came up with the goods. I’ll get on to it right away.’
‘No snout. Like I said, it was just a quid pro quo.’
‘Any time I can do the same for you …’
‘Like getting me off on a murder rap? I tell you, it’ll be for that swine of a chauvinistic sergeant I seem joined to at the hip. Though you needn’t look far for alternative suspects!’
Z laughed, let the book fall on the floor and rolled out of bed. Now that she had a name for the teenager she’d drop in at the hospital, so they could fill in their paperwork.
She found Alyson had a free day, but Bernice told her the lad was stabilized and transferred from ITU to High Dependency, the adjoining unit. She went through and recognized him propped up on three pillows, scowling at the duty nurse at the central desk who monitored the bank of screens for her patients. He was still wired up to a drip, but otherwise seemed ready for the next phase of ‘step down’. However pathetic he’d looked on first sight, now he was making progress. Tomorrow, she was told, he could be on an open ward.
Z dropped a couple of magazines on his bed and grinned breezily. ‘Hi, Micky. How’re things today?’
His scowl transferred itself on to her, then she saw the panic dart in his eyes as he caught up on what she’d called him. ‘My name’s Joe.’
‘Whatever,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Hope I’ve hit on something that interests you.’ She nodded towards the magazines.
He poked them apart with a rigid finger. ‘Football,’ he said scornfully. Apparently model aircraft were more in his line. He picked that one up. ‘Thanks, anyway.’ He sounded a tad ashamed of his surliness. Maybe had decent manners drummed into him way back. Less spiky now, perhaps he’d decide she’d hit on his name by sheer fluke.
‘You work in this place?’ he demanded.
‘No. Just across the square. Civil servant. Anyway, can’t stop. Got shopping to do.’
His sudden look of suspicion must mean he’d taken her for a social worker. Or was wary of the Probation Office.
‘Benefits clerk,’ she said cheerfully. True enough; she liked to think of the Job as beneficial. ‘Be seeing you.’
Lying in the second bed from the nurse’s station, Micky had watched the woman all morning and half the afternoon through slitted eyes, awaiting his opportunity. Everyone, he knew, was a creature of habit, and she no different despite the training. There had to be a moment he could use. She busily came and went, spoke to doctors or colleagues at the door, returned, checking the six beds, one unoccupied, finally the bank of monitors on her desk.
They were what bugged him. He’d have to wipe out the system, then he could manage the rest. All he needed was one minute when she was otherwise engaged. It came when a nutty old guy at the far end started plucking at his stitches. A triple heart-bypass, he’d been moved in during the night when there was a rush on ITU. The nurse went across to him, dealt with him like a schoolmarm. And then was distracted as a porter and nurse from A&E started barging in with a trolley and a patient for the vacant bed.
Micky swung his feet out, reached for the IV stand and started gently wheeling it towards the toilets. ‘Gotta go. I’m bursting,’ he protested as the nurse turned to block him off.
The trolley was now alongside the vacant bed and the other nurse waiting. ‘Mind how you go, then,’ the dragon warned, and turned her back as he slid past. A patient by the swing door rais
ed himself on one elbow, but Micky scowled savagely and he saw fit to look away. With luck, no need now to tamper with the monitors.
He made it to the corridor. There were figures walking his way from the far end. He pulled open the neighbouring wood-panelled door. It was a walk-in linen cupboard. He tore the cannula from his wrist and steered the IV stand into the vacant space. Voices passed outside. When it was quiet again he ventured out.
Along the corridor two women in outdoor clothes were seated on stacking chairs outside a door marked X-ray, awaiting their turn. Hoping they’d accept that his hospital gown granted him priority, he nodded confidently and went through the swing doors.
He had entered a square ante-room having three cubicles with the curtains left open. They all appeared empty. In two there were neatly folded blue gowns on the seat, but the last had outdoor clothing hung from a hook on the partition wall.
From beyond a closed door marked No Entry he made out the radiographer’s voice as she settled a patient on the table. From the opposite end a swing door opened and a ward maid started to enter backwards wheeling a small trolley of crockery. He whipped inside the further cubicle and pulled the curtain across.
Behind his neck he felt the cool touch of a leather car coat. He lifted it down, removed the check shirt and tweedy trousers hanging under it. They would have fitted a six-foot fatty, but they were all on offer. He had no hope of tracking down his own clothes removed when he was brought in.
He slipped on boxer shorts and string vest, bunched the voluminous trousers at his waist inside a belt that had no holes where he needed them, but the leather was soft enough for him to knot it at one hip. The check shirt was like a maternity dress and he stuffed it in to give himself bulk. Then, with the trousers tucked up inside at the ankles, he could rely on the car coat to cover any suspicious lumps.
The maid had trundled her trolley out into the corridor and now she was standing beside the two waiting women, chatting as Micky walked past, self-conscious at his bulk. If they noticed anything odd perhaps they’d accept it as teenage grunge.
He made it unchallenged to the hospital’s main entrance and shuddered as the outer chill struck his exposed head. For a microsecond he regretted leaving the overheated ward, but liberty was sweeter. They could be searching for him already, haring around the corridors in panic, but Security would be slow to connect the X-ray outpatient’s theft of clothes with a nameless teenager missing from High Dependency.
He was just glad he hadn’t needed to pull the plug on the monitor system. It might have meant curtains for one of the really doddery old guys linked up to it.
DS Zyczynski had had second thoughts about passing Micky’s name to hospital reception before dropping in at the nick to check on missing persons on the PNC. When she scrolled through records, his name flashed up as a runaway juvenile, aged thirteen, with an address in Wimbledon.
It sounded like a classy neighbourhood. So what had got into Micky that he decided to leave home some five days back?
A phone call to the Met could relieve her of further responsibility. The DC she spoke to agreed to inform the Kane family of his whereabouts and arrange a visit. Back here uniform branch were handling the theft of the debit card, but she was curious enough to chase up the officer who’d dealt with it. She found him in the canteen.
‘This guy Allbright was right chuffed to have it back,’ he told her. ‘Refused to press charges. Yeah; said he must have dropped it, renewing his season ticket at the station.’
Nothing surprising there. That was where Moura’s informant had said young Micky hung around. He could have picked the card up innocently enough, but it didn’t excuse his using it fraudulently. Nor did it explain how he’d obtained the man’s PIN number for withdrawing cash. It seemed the constable hadn’t questioned Allbright about that.
Z doubted Micky Kane was used to sleeping rough inside the station perimeter. Drugs Squad should have been checking on any dealing taking place there, and wouldn’t station staff, a cleaner at least, have had some idea of activities overnight? There would have been debris left behind: food wrappers or used needles.
‘So this Eric Allbright’s a commuter. Did he say where to?’
The constable stared at her. ‘Nuh. Wasn’t the chatty sort.’
A constable at the next table leaned across. ‘Did you say Allbright? Bloke lives in Carrington Way?’
Between them they decided it was the same man. ‘He’s a night-worker at the stationery warehouse. Last week he reported damage to the nearside wing of his Vectra while it was parked in the yard. Working locally, what would he want with a season rail ticket?’
‘Dunno. Mebbe he’s got a day job somewhere else as well. What’s the opposite of moonlighting? – sunlighting?’
The chat was degenerating into feeble witticisms. Interesting all the same, Zyczynski reckoned. Not all the tittle-tattle in canteen was entirely useless.
Checking up on the young runaway had eaten into her free morning. While in the building she might as well check in CID office whether anything fresh had come in.
A faxed pathology report was addressed to her, covering a post mortem she’d attended on an eighteen year old woman found dead in the family garage. As assumed then, the cause of death was confirmed as carbon monoxide poisoning, with no reason to doubt it being self-administered. She had also ingested a number of painkiller capsules with a considerable quantity of alcohol.
In which case, Z agreed, this was certainly a serious attempt, unlike the botched wrist-slashing by Audrey Stanford. Hers had been intended, if only fleetingly, as escape from the horror of terminal cancer; whereas this other woman apparently had a clean bill of health and no known reason to end a young life full of promise. Except that she’d been rather much of a loner, didn’t mix with others in her final school year.
So how and why did she accumulate the capsules? Z asked herself. She couldn’t have obtained that quantity in one purchase. And if not taken to deaden some physical pain, had she some overwhelming grief or guilt? Before the inquest someone really must look again at her personal history. And supposedly that chore would fall to herself.
Sheena Judd always resented working at weekends, but this Saturday Alyson had free from the hospital, so she stayed home to let Emily’s carer go. Sheena caught a midday London train to go window-shopping in Oxford Street, intending to stay on late for a meal in Soho, to watch the passing nightlife from a bar stool, wander past the sleazy strip clubs, dreaming how she’d be taken for a model, at home among the bright lights.
Reality was otherwise. She examined a lot of fashion clothes she might have wanted if they’d been a quarter of the price, and even more that she wouldn’t be seen dead in however throwaway the offers. Continuous tramping of city streets made her feet ache and swell. As for being noticed, she could have been invisible. Three gawking youths, turning from lurid pictures in a club doorway, jostled her off the pavement. She cut off a howl of pain as her ankle turned in the gutter. One looked back and made an obscene gesture with a finger.
Time to slope off home before things got really rough up here. The food at the Greek cafe had been fatty and now she was bloody well getting heartburn. She picked up a bunch of tired mauve chrysanthemums for half price from a trader closing down his barrow, turned on weary feet and made again for Oxford Street and a bus for the station. In the train she picked off the occasional brown petals and dropped them to the floor.
The flowers would still do to pass to Mum. Another gift from the new boyfriend, she’d say, like the single eclair left over yesterday and carried home as a trophy. Four would have made her sick anyway, and Markham had said he didn’t do the cannibal thing, whatever he meant by that.
No harm in stringing the old girl along. A bit of a giggle getting her all excited about possibilities; not that anything’d come of whatever it was she had going with Markham. He might not be the total tosser she’d taken him for, but all the same …went a bit over the top like. Didn’t know where to
stop. She wasn’t sure she was on for much more rough stuff, though it was good at the time. Maybe hold off a bit. Treat him mean and keep him keen. Or not so much keen as more careful. Let him give her some decent presents. And, if she kept on at him, maybe he’d take her out in his car.
Alyson Orme checked over the printout of her shopping list for the coming week and laid it alongside the telephone. The supermarket preferred orders for delivery taken off the website but she didn’t subscribe to the habit; used a PC but hadn’t a modem. It was hard enough to cram her life into twenty-four hours without such time-devouring pursuits.
She checked on Emily, who was sitting out, smiling dreamily, eyes closed and music playing in her headset. It was luxury to get the whole day here at the flat with her. They rarely shared afternoons together. Later she would drive her round all the rooms in her wheelchair so she could enjoy her pictures again. And if it hadn’t tired her too much they’d end up at the observation window and have tea looking out at the hills. Until then there were jobs to do, and she hadn’t yet brought up the morning’s post from downstairs. Alyson went down, unlocked the penthouse box and slid out her letters. Among the junk mail and a couple of receipted bills was a belated and buckled Christmas card from an old colleague nursing in Barbados. She examined the postmark. Only five weeks getting here! It looked careworn enough for twice that.
There was also a hand-delivered envelope addressed to her and bearing the name of the law firm Callendar, Fitt and Travis on the reverse flap. Further instructions regarding Emily’s welfare? She tore the envelope open. The letter, above Timothy Fitt’s cramped signature, gave notice that a representative of Miss Withers’ insurance company was preparing a fresh schedule for the art works in her collection. It would be appreciated if he could be accorded every facility to review the pictures. No likely date was given for his visit.
