The Health of Strangers

by Lesley Kelly

  ‘Are you sure this is it?’ Her partner still looked sceptical, and she could feel little prickles of irritation rising on her skin.

  ‘I mean,’ Bernard continued, ‘I can’t see anything that indicates this is a pub, never mind a sign saying Morley’s.’

  ‘Believe me, before I joined CID I was called here often enough on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her partner looked concerned. ‘Bit rough is it?’

  ‘Yep, but I’ve got your back.’

  She gave him a gentle push, and he lost his footing and grabbed at the metal handrail. Balance restored, he turned and glared at her. ‘Thanks, Mona. Good to know.’

  Bernard walked slowly and carefully down the remaining steps, and she resisted, with some difficulty, the urge to push him again. The sign on Morley’s door said it was closed, so Bernard tapped gently on the wood.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She turned the handle and pushed the door open.

  Morley’s was large, low-ceilinged, and dark. Mona took a second to adjust to the lack of light, then gave the room a once-over. On the left there was a bar that curved along two walls, and on the right were a selection of mismatched chairs, benches, and whisky barrels masquerading as tables. There were other rooms leading off the central area, but it was too dark to see them properly. What she could see, however, was a young man behind the bar washing glasses.

  ‘Hi.’

  The man stopped his cleaning momentarily and looked up in surprise.

  ‘We’re not op—’

  ‘I know.’ Mona pushed past Bernard, and flashed her ID card over the counter. ‘We’re from the Health Enforcement Team.’

  The barman grimaced. ‘Green Cards, please.’

  They dutifully held up their Health Status Cards which he glanced at, without stopping his work.

  ‘Immune? Lucky you.’

  ‘Is the manager in?’ she asked.

  ‘The manager no, the owner yes. You want a word?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘He’s through the back.’

  The barman reached behind him and flicked a switch. The lights came on and the alcoves and doorways leading off the room lit up. He flicked a further switch, and the room they were in was flooded with light, illuminating the badly stained paintwork and carpet. She saw a look of horror on her colleague’s face, and wondered if he was personally or professionally disgusted. She found it hard to picture Bernard in a pub for pleasure; a wine bar maybe, at a push. She caught the barman’s eye. He appeared to be amused by Bernard’s distaste.

  ‘It’s a paradise, isn’t it?’

  Bernard smiled weakly, and Mona pushed him in the direction of the back room.

  Victor Thompson was a well-kent face on the Edinburgh pub and club scene. He was a dapper fifty-something, with a nice line in expensive suits and cashmere coats, and he sported a hair colour that didn’t entirely fit with the lines on his face. He recognised Mona, and looked puzzled.

  ‘I thought you worked for CID?’

  ‘I’ve been seconded to Health Enforcement.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  She nodded her thanks without smiling.

  ‘Take the weight off.’ Victor pointed to the small sofa next to him, and swept the papers he had spread out on the table in front of him into a neat pile. She had a discreet look at the room they were in. It was a small function suite, of a size that could comfortably hold around fifty people, assuming they had no objection to partying in a room with only one entrance, no windows, and a floor that your shoes stuck to.

  Victor continued. ‘I don’t know what brings you here though. I’m doing everything by the book. Every bastard that sets foot through that door gets carded by the bouncers.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that, Mr Thompson, but we’re here on a different matter. We’re looking for this woman.’ Mona unfolded a photograph of Heidi. ‘We believe she was a regular here before she went missing.’

  The entrepreneur gave the picture a cursory glance. ‘Can’t say I recognise her. But then I’m not here that much. You’d be better off talking to the staff.’

  ‘Can we leave this with your manager, ask him to get in touch if any of the bar staff recognise her?’

  Victor picked up the photo. ‘The number of punters I get in here these days, if she was here they’d know it.’

  ‘Business is bad?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘Bad?’ Victor leaned back in his seat and stared at her partner. ‘Let me see, I’ve got you lot telling me I’ve got to card everyone that walks through that door. I’ve got a restaurant that I’m not allowed more than twenty people in – have you ever tried to make a profit out of twenty covers? I had to dish out the best part of ten grand to install contact-free toilet flushing systems, because the Government decided the general public can’t be relied upon to wash their hands, even though your mob has adverts on the TV every ten minutes telling us to soap-and-go. And,’ his voice rose an octave, ‘to cap it all, I’ve got a nightclub sitting empty because you folk won’t let me open.’

  ‘But the Virus spreads most easily in hot, crowded environments . . .’

  ‘Thanks for your time, Sir.’ Mona cut across her colleague, and turned on her heel, leaving Bernard to follow behind her, nodding his goodbyes to Victor and the barman.

  ‘Why did you start explaining how the Virus spreads?’ Mona didn’t try to hide her irritation. She pressed the doorbell to Heidi’s tenement flat for the second time, and this time kept leaning on the buzzer.

  Bernard pointed at her finger, and she glared at him. Some days everything about her new partner annoyed her. She hated his endless ability to remain reasonable, even when members of the public were being completely ridiculous. She hated his ability to remember every fact and figure he’d ever heard relating to the Virus. But most of all, she hated the fact that he wasn’t Police.

  When her boss had said he was nominating her to the HET she’d been flattered. DCI Rodgers had called her into his office.

  ‘Thing is, Mona, loath as I am to let you go . . .’

  ‘Go?’

  She stared at his round, florid face. He seemed to be finding it difficult to meet her eye, and she started to panic. Was this payback for the nastiness earlier in the year? She knew that Rodgers and Bill Hamilton were friends from their Police college days, but she’d thought he wasn’t taking sides.

  ‘It’s orders from on high, really, what with you being immune. We’re under a lot of pressure to recommend decent people to the HETs.’

  ‘The HETs?’

  ‘Health Enforcement Teams – they’re elite squads, sort of, made up of Police and health care workers – all immune, of course.’

  Mona frowned. ‘And doing what?’

  ‘Tracking down Health Defaulters. The hardcore ones, I mean, not just folk that are a day late back from holiday.’

  She relaxed a little. ‘And what do we do with them when we track them down?’

  ‘Frogmarch them to the nearest Health Check Centre.’

  ‘And if they refuse?’

  ‘A night in a clean-cell, then a visit to the doctor, or for repeat offenders, a short prison sentence and fine.’

  Mona liked the sound of being part of a crack team. Had to be a step up from CID, which wasn’t all it was made out to be.

  She uncrossed her legs and sat forward in her chair. ‘So, would this be a sideways move then, Guv?’

  ‘Well, on paper.’ Rodgers pointed at her with a biro. ‘But, in reality it’s got to be seen as a promotion, hasn’t it? I mean, the Virus is where everything is at these days, isn’t it? The work there is cutting edge, and of course, desperately needed.’

  If her country needed her to fight the Virus, she wasn’t going to say no. Especially if it was going to look good on her CV as well.

  ‘And things here aren’t as busy as they were.’

  This was true. Some staff could be spared; the absence of nightclubs and the increased regulation of pubs meant less public disorder on Fr
iday and Saturday nights. CID had fewer drink-fuelled stabbings to investigate. People went out less, which meant fewer empty houses to be burgled.

  ‘So, you’ll do it then?’

  ‘Of course, Guv.’

  Rodgers looked relieved. He stood up, reached over his desk and gave her a playful punch on the shoulder. ‘We’ll miss you, of course, Mona.’

  ‘Well, I’ll probably be back in a month or two.’ She stood up. ‘There’s bound to be a cure any day now.’

  Rodgers stuck his hand out and shook Mona’s. ‘Bound to be. Bound to be.’

  He shook her hand for slightly longer than felt comfortable.

  Mona’s enthusiasm for the HET lasted right up until meeting the other team members, particularly Bernard, who, in Paterson’s words, had a degree in health-whatsit and was some kind of ex-athlete thingy. Health conscious and sporty her new partner may be. A top-notch crime fighter he was not.

  ‘What did you say, Mona?’ said Bernard. ‘And I think you can stop ringing now. If there’s anyone in they’ll have heard you.’

  ‘I said, why did you go into all that shit about how the Virus spreads with Vic Thompson? We’re Enforcement Officers. We can make people do things, we don’t have to talk them into it.’

  Bernard had a look on his face that she’d come to hate over the past few months. It conveyed disbelief that she didn’t share his point of view, with an undercurrent of bitter disappointment in her.

  ‘Maybe some of us prefer people to comply because they understand why we’re doing something, rather than doing it because they’re scared of us?’

  She decided not to engage with the lefty bullshit. ‘I get it, Bernard. We’re not the Police.’

  Mona pressed the bell again, and gave it three short blasts. If it hadn’t been for Bernard, if she’d been teamed with a half-decent Police colleague, she’d have been quite enjoying today. Over the six months she’d spent at the HET the work had settled into a certain pattern, week after week of chasing individuals whose erratic lifestyles prevented them embracing the routine of a Health Check. She’d dragged addicts out of crack dens and into doctor’s surgeries, chased up truants spending schooldays in arcades, tracked down drinkers who slept through their appointment times on piss-stained memorial benches. And she was sick of it, bored stiff by the monotony of chaos.

  But this case, this Heidi woman, was different. For one thing, their usual Health Defaulters didn’t live in Marchmont. The area was green and leafy, bordering on to the city centre park called the Meadows, and filled with flats shared by affluent Edinburgh University students. She looked at the well-polished nameplates at the side of the door to Heidi’s tenement, and thought it was unlikely she’d be stepping on any discarded syringes in her hallway.

  Her colleague’s phone rang, and even from three feet away she could hear the loud tones of Marcus from IT.

  ‘Bernard? Marcus here. We’ve finished with that German lassie’s laptop. Some interesting stuff on it – can you pop over?’

  Bernard put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘We might as well – there’s obviously no-one in.’

  Mona stepped back into the road to get a better look at the second-floor windows. Her partner was right, unfortunately. There was no sign of life.

  ‘Is the lovely Mona coming with you?’

  Mona rolled her eyes. She could do without an hour of the HET’s leading geek trying to impress her. She communicated this to Bernard with a shake of her head. Bernard stifled a smile.

  ‘Eh, think it’ll just be me. See you soon.’

  They walked back in the direction of the car. They passed a bus stop emblazoned with a full-length purple and green PHeDA poster, which Bernard ducked into to check the timetable. She took pity on him.

  ‘I’ll drop you off.’

  ‘Thanks, that’d be great.’

  He looked unnecessarily grateful, and Mona felt a twinge of guilt. She should be nicer to him, really. He was harmless, if annoying. They reached the car and she stepped out into the road.

  ‘What are you going to do while I’m with IT?’ asked Bernard, over the Audi’s roof.

  It was a good question. ‘Back to the office.’ She pulled open the door. ‘Review the case notes and look for more potential leads.’

  A decent outcome to the search would look good for her; show she’d still got her detective wits about her. Maybe she could even wangle a return to CID on the back of it. Let Bernard bugger about with the IT section –she was going to crack this case if it killed her. She had one foot in the car when her phone rang.

  ‘Mona.’

  It was Maitland.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I need to interview a vulnerable teenage girl, and for some reason Paterson won’t let me go on my own.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Where do I need to be?’

  ‘Milne’s Court Hall of Residence on the High Street. And Mona?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think they’ll be having a pillow fight in their underwear when we get there?’

  She hung up, cursing her bad luck.

  She turned to face her partner, who was putting on his seat belt.

  ‘Sorry, Bernard, change of plan. You’re on the bus.’

  4

  Maitland, Mona and the girl sat in silence. She was late teens, slim, with long brown hair that was pulled back at one side with a red hairgrip. She perched on the end of the bed, avoiding eye contact, and nervously twisting the corner of the quilt in her hand.

  Mona hadn’t visited a Hall of Residence in years. She’d been in Milne’s Court once before, years before the Virus, when a night out in Edinburgh had resulted in a one-night stand with a student. The room had been similar to this, with two beds – God, where had the room-mate gone for the night! – but not identical. She suspected that no two rooms in the place were the same, not with the age of it. It must be three, maybe four hundred years old?

  ‘This has got to be a great place to live,’ she said. ‘I mean you’re only metres from the castle. Couldn’t be much more central.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the girl, still tugging at the quilt.

  ‘And it’s like living inside a piece of history, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  She could have an English accent, but she’d said so little it was hard to tell. Her room didn’t give too much away about her either. There was a clip frame hanging over her bed, full of what looked like family pictures, and a framed prayer asking for protection from the Virus on her cabinet. At a guess Mona’d say she had two parents, a young brother, a dog, a lack of Immunity, and an active Christian faith. With those kinds of leads, the case would be solved by teatime.

  Maitland and Mona looked at each other, and she pointedly looked at her watch.

  Maitland was awkwardly balancing a cup of tea he had been given, for which the girl had not had any milk. He blew into the cup and took a sip. ‘So, your friend will be . . .’

  ‘She’ll be here any minute.’

  The interview wasn’t going well. On their arrival at her door, the girl had panicked. She’d refused to give as much as her name until her friend arrived as moral support. Mona looked at her watch again, and considered leaning a little more heavily on the teenager. She was all in favour of softly-softly, but she wanted back to the office, and back to her own case. She reached out a foot and gave Maitland a discreet kick.

  He glared at her but before he could respond there was a knock, the door flew open and a girl bounded into the room. She had long, curly hair which spiralled down to a mature pair of breasts. Mona’s eyes lingered on them for a moment, then she turned to look at Maitland. As she had anticipated, his tongue was all but hanging out. The girl smiled at him.

  ‘I’m Kate, what did I miss?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ said Maitland, and stood up to shake her hand. ‘Believe me.’

  She stared at him for a second, with her head on one side. ‘You look familiar – have we met before?’

 
‘I don’t think so.’

  Maitland looked slightly flustered, and Mona was intrigued. Where would her colleague have met a teenage Christian?

  The girl looked in her direction, and Mona smiled back. ‘We’re trying to speak to your friend here, but she’s a little tongue-tied.’

  Kate laughed, and bounced on to the bed. The two girls sat holding hands.

  ‘So,’ said Mona, ‘now that your pal is here, are you happy to confirm that you are Louise Jones, room-mate of Colette Greenwood?’

  She looked at her friend before answering. ‘Yes.’

  Mona felt a stab of irritation. If Louise needed backup to confirm her own name it was going to be a very frustrating interview. She ploughed on.

  ‘And, are you aware that she missed her Health Check last week?’

  ‘Did she?’ Kate didn’t appear concerned. ‘I didn’t know.’ She smiled. ‘But I suppose everyone misses one at some point.’

  ‘No,’ said Mona, ‘because not turning up to your Health Check is a criminal offence. Most people try very, very hard not to miss their Health Check.’

  Kate was contemplating her fingernails.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Colette?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Two, three weeks ago, perhaps? She’s not been around for a while.’

  ‘Not been around?’ Maitland jumped in. ‘Louise, did you report her missing?’

  Kate answered. ‘We think she’s at her parents’. She leaned forward on the bed and said in a stage whisper, ‘Boy trouble.’ She sat back with a smile.

  Mona looked at the two of them. They were both twenty, if that, and a teenager going home to her mother after splitting up with a boyfriend didn’t seem unlikely. And yet, there was something in the pat way that Kate had said it that didn’t ring true. Also, Louise was shaking a lot for a girl who wasn’t lying. She wondered if Maitland was thinking the same. She caught his eye, and he winked at her.

  ‘Boy trouble? What, had she been sleeping around?’

  For the first time since she arrived, Kate appeared annoyed. ‘We’re Christians, Mr Stevenson. We don’t believe in sex before marriage.’