‘That’s good, that you’re back. And are you getting out a bit, with friends?’ Kathy looked round the living room for any signs of a male admirer, but all she could see was the striking neatness of it all, as if Alison lived here like a ghost, without disturbing anything.
‘Now and again. Sit down.’
‘Thanks. What can I do for you?’
‘It was about that story at the hospital, about the old woman with the missing daughter, that you asked me to check.’
‘Ah, yes. Did you find out any more about that?’
‘I did speak to the cook, but she couldn’t remember who she’d heard it from. She thought it might have been one of the nurses from Sister McLeod’s ward, but she wasn’t sure . . .’ Her voice tailed off.
‘I’m sorry. It’s not much help is it? I could have told you over the phone.’
Kathy guessed that Alison needed to feel she was doing something to help, and she said, ‘No, that’s fine. That’s useful. I can speak to Sister McLeod if I need to follow it up.’
‘Do you think you will?’
‘Maybe not at this stage. It doesn’t look a very promising line of enquiry after all.’
‘Oh.’ Alison nodded sadly. ‘I’m glad really. I wouldn’t like to think that there’ve been others. But you’re still working on the case?’
‘Still trying to tie up loose ends,’ Kathy said, and, more to sound convincing than anything more positive, she took from her shoulder bag an A4 envelope she’d picked up at Hornchurch Street. She slid out the photographs onto the coffee table, stills blown up from the security camera shots of North a week before together with file pictures of some of his old associates. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen this man before?’
She imagined what Leon would think of the question: a stab in the dark. And of course Alison hadn’t seen him before. And yet Kathy, watching her shake her head blankly, felt a small pang of irrational annoyance at fate, such as you feel when your lottery ticket doesn’t make you rich, even though you know the odds are fourteen million to one.
‘Sorry. Was it important?’
‘No, not in the least.’ Kathy gathered up the pictures and glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get going.’
‘Me too. I’ll need to go for my bus.’
‘It’s West Essex General, isn’t it, where you work?’ Kathy said. ‘I’ll drop you off if you like. It’s not out of my way.’
On the road they talked about neutral things: the hospital and the problems and advantages of working for big organisations. Then, as Kathy turned into the carpark, Alison pointed to a side wing and said that that was where Sister McLeod’s ward was.
‘I suppose . . . I could show you how to get there if you wanted.’
It was as if they both felt compelled to follow through with this, though neither was enthusiastic.
‘Oh, yes,’ Kathy said. ‘Yes, I suppose you could.’
Kathy studied the illuminated information map in the foyer of the hospital, trying to work out the way to geriatrics, but without success. The plan looked like a wiring diagram or printed circuit, with a maze of corridors and departments. Even with a route map she doubted if she could follow the way. Fortunately, when she asked at the enquiries desk, she discovered that the administration of West Essex General had solved this problem. The main circulation routes had recently been ‘themed’, the woman explained, to make it easy to find your way around, the themes being modelled on popular TV series. Thus you might follow the Coronation Street route to obstetrics and gynaecology, or Dr Who to orthopaedics. As she followed Emmerdale to geriatrics, Kathy began to feel that the make-believe world of the mall was leaching out into the world at large, and wondered if the nurses would be dressed like milkmaids. Thankfully they were not.
Sister McLeod was a big, black, irrepressibly cheerful woman whose principal therapeutic quality lay in her ability to dispel introspection and self-pity among the old wrecks in her care. Kathy followed her down the ward to her little office, her banter leaving a trail of wry chuckles and wincing smiles in their wake.
‘Alison Vlasich?’ She pondered as they sat down. ‘Is she a redhead?’
‘No,’ Kathy said. ‘Light brown hair, shoulder length. Thin, pale complexion.’
‘Anaemic-looking? Looks like she needs a good steak and a Guinness?’
‘Yes, I’d say she does.’
‘I think I can place her. In the kitchens, behind the counter. So it was her daughter they found? Poor woman, that’s terrible.’
‘She happened to mention to us that she’d heard stories here of another girl disappearing at Silvermeadow.’
‘Here? Really?’
‘Yes. Apparently one of the nurses on this ward told one of the cooks about a patient here, an old woman, who was saying she’d lost her daughter out there.’
Sister McLeod frowned. ‘I don’t remember that one. How long ago would that have been?’
‘We’re not sure. Maybe last spring or summer.’
The nurse shook her head doubtfully, took down a book from a shelf behind the desk and began thumbing through its pages. It seemed to be a daily record, each page a day. She worked her way slowly through the days, pausing from time to time over a name.
‘I had a fortnight in Marbella second half of August,’ she said. ‘You been there?’
Kathy shook her head.
‘Nice. Hot though.’ She turned back a page and frowned, stroking a name with her finger tip. ‘Velma. She had a photo of a daughter . . . about all she did have.’
‘Velma?’
‘That’s what it sounded like, but no one knew her name for sure. Admitted here on the twelfth of August. Gave us a bit of a scare at first. Thought she might be a TB case.’ Sister McLeod turned the pages. ‘Yes, here. She died during the night of the twenty-eighth of August, while I was away. Pneumonia.’
‘And you think she might be the one?’
‘I don’t know, but I remember she did go on about the girl in the photo. She was in a bad way when she came in. Been living rough. She didn’t seem to speak much English and she had no identification.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Hard to say. Her skin was weather-beaten and leathery and she looked seventy-plus. But the post-mortem reckoned she was still ovulating, or would have been if she hadn’t been in such a state. I remember we talked about it the day I came back.’
‘Who do you think might have been the nurse who spoke to the cook?’
‘Well, could be several . . .’ She looked through the book again and read out a few names, some of whom had moved on to other wards or hospitals, and others who were still at WEG. Finally she said, ‘Jenny Powell perhaps. She’s still here. You could try her.’
‘She was on the ward at the time the woman was here?’
‘Yes, and she likes mysteries.’ She grinned at Kathy. ‘Especially tragic ones.’
Nurse Powell wasn’t due on until the afternoon shift, but Sister McLeod phoned the nurses’ home, and after some delay Jenny Powell came to the phone, exchanged some weary curses with the other nurse and spoke to Kathy. She remembered Velma well, she said, the old, mad lady who had kept the ward awake at night speaking in tongues, none of them English. Her fretting, feverish appeals had been to God rather than the health service, for she invariably clutched a crucifix in one hand and a small framed photograph of a girl in the other. The girl was black-haired, dark-eyed like her, and in her lucid moments she had told anyone who would listen that she was ‘daughter, daughter’. In Velma’s coat pocket they had found a grubby folded sheet of paper on which someone had printed a message with a marker pen.
‘It said something like “have you seen my daughter”? or “help me find my daughter”, something like that.’
‘I see,’ Kathy said. ‘And what was the connection with Silvermeadow?’
‘That’s where they brought her from. She collapsed in the mall there, and they called an ambulance.’
Nurse Powell added that
the hospital administration had notified the police and the social services about Velma and her message, in the hope of tracing her identity and family, but as far as she knew nothing had come of it.
There was a quick way to get from geriatrics to administration, apparently, but only regulars were advised to try it. Kathy took the safer route back to reception by way of Emmerdale and then followed The Benny Hill Show out to the offices of the hospital administration. After a couple of false starts she was taken through a vast open-plan office to the work station of the records manager (stakeholder services), a middle-aged woman who was focused on devouring a large cream bun. After wiping her mouth and fingers she shook Kathy’s hand and offered her a chair while she searched her computer for ‘Velma’. It didn’t take long, and when the file came up on the screen it was clear that the computer knew no more about the woman who had died on the twenty-eighth of August than Sister McLeod and Nurse Powell—no name, birth date, nationality or next of kin. It had allocated her a patient number, with a cross-reference to another number with an ‘R’ prefix.
‘R for repository,’ the woman explained. ‘Her belongings were sent to repository.’
‘Are they still there?’
‘Should be. We keep unclaimed property for twelve months, then dispose of it. It doesn’t look as if it’s been claimed, if there’s still an R number on file.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘You can look, but if you want to remove it you’ll probably have to apply to the coroner’s office.’
The woman guided Kathy back to the lift lobby and told her how to get to the enquiry counter of the repository in the basement, where she filled in a request form and was presented with a large brown cardboard box with reinforced corners, with the R number printed on its label. Inside were Velma’s few pathetic remains. The largest item was her black coat, threadbare and grubby. Holding it up by the shoulders Kathy could see how small she must have been, the shoulders as narrow as a child’s. There was a label at the collar, but the maker’s name, korda, meant nothing to Kathy, and there was no care label or other clue as to its origins.
There was one plastic bag containing articles of ill-matched clothing which looked as if they had come from a charity or secondhand shop, and another smaller one with personal possessions. Inside was the crucifix and framed photograph of the girl, as well as a small plain wedding ring, a purse with a few coins, and a small bag of cough sweets. There was no printed message.
‘I’d like to borrow the photograph,’ she told the man behind the counter. ‘To check with our missing persons files.’
‘Yeah, don’t see why not. You’ll have to sign for it.’
She did so, and managed to find an exit to a staff carpark, from which she made her way out to the street, and eventually back to the visitors’ carpark in which she’d left her car.
She drove out to the suburb in which Speedy lived, and this time the hope of a lottery win seemed more likely, even inevitable. If there was a connection between Kerri Vlasich’s murder and the robbery, then Speedy, dying so neatly in between the two events, was surely it.
Kathy began with the old couple next door to Speedy’s house. They examined the photographs of North and his old associates with greedy interest and a running commentary: ‘Ooh, look at this one! He’s evil, isn’t he? Wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night . . .’
Only they couldn’t recall seeing any of them before.
Kathy tried the whole street with no more success, and finally returned to her car, defeated. The only mildly relevant information she’d gathered had been the suggestion from a woman across the street from Speedy that he was sometimes visited by someone in an Audi, or an Opel. Kathy took out her notebook to check which it was, and opened it at the notes of her meeting with Sister McLeod.
As she scanned the pages, the date twelfth of August, when Velma had been admitted, suddenly struck her. She flicked back to earlier notes, but couldn’t find what she was looking for, and finally started up the car and returned to Hornchurch Street, where she began searching through the boxes of material that had been brought back from unit 184 at Silvermeadow. Eventually she found her photocopies of Harry Jackson’s daybooks, and thumbed through to the entry she was after.
When she reached Silvermeadow a watery winter sun was gleaming on the cars which half-filled the carpark. A van with a TV current affairs programme logo was parked at the foot of the service road ramp, and Kathy saw the solid figure of Harry Jackson further along the unloading platform with a knot of technicians, pointing out the stairway and storeroom where the two guards had been found.
She walked over to the security centre and found Sharon on duty at the control window.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Course.’
Kathy stepped inside. ‘Harry giving guided tours is he?’ she said.
‘Trying to calm them down. Some hope! They want all the nasty details. You were here last Saturday, weren’t you, Kathy? Maybe you should speak to them.’
‘No thanks.’
‘I’m really glad I wasn’t here. It makes me feel sick to think about it, them shooting those two guards like that, in cold blood, like an execution. It could have been me, or any of us.’
‘Yes, well, you lot were a bit thin on the ground that day. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m doing a follow-up, rechecking where everyone was on Saturday afternoon.’
‘I thought you’d got all that information.’
‘Yes, well,’ Kathy shrugged, ‘just making absolutely sure, you know.’
‘Sounds as if you’re stuck.’
Kathy smiled and opened her clipboard with the schedule compiled from the statements which had been previously taken from the security staff. ‘They showed you photographs, didn’t they, Sharon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just take another look, to be sure.’
Kathy opened the envelope and laid out the pictures once more. Sharon shook her head firmly.
‘All right. So where were you on Saturday?’
‘With my fiancé, doing Christmas shopping.’
‘Here?’
‘No, I have enough of this place in working hours. We went into Brentwood. We were there all afternoon. It was bedlam.’
‘Right.’ Kathy checked off the entry in the schedule, then looked out of the window and pointed at the group further down the service road. ‘And Harry was in central London, at a conference . . .’
Sharon gave a vague smile but didn’t say anything.
‘Did he have a good time?’
Sharon shrugged and looked away. ‘S’pose. Better ask him.’
‘Didn’t you talk about it?’
‘We mostly talked about the robbery.’
‘Yes . . .’ Kathy looked closely at the other woman, wondering why she was sounding so evasive. ‘But . . .’
‘But?’ Sharon turned and stared blandly at her in an unconvincing demonstration of frankness.
‘But you also talked about Harry’s conference, right?’
‘Oh . . . yes.’
‘Well?’
Sharon blushed suddenly and turned away. ‘You’d better ask him.’
‘I’m asking you, Sharon,’ Kathy insisted. ‘Come on. What’s the problem?’
‘What do you mean, problem?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think: I think you don’t like telling fibs to coppers.’
Sharon’s blush deepened sharply. ‘You’ll lose me my job,’ she muttered. ‘That’s what’s the problem.’ She looked out of the control window towards her boss and the TV crew.
‘I can be discreet, you know. What’s he done?’
Sharon sighed. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really, but I don’t want to sneak on him. We bumped into him when we were shopping that afternoon, about two.’
‘At Brentwood?’
‘Yeah. He said he’d got bored with the conference and come back early. But he made me promise not to let on to Bo or anyone e
lse. Wouldn’t look good.’
‘I see. He was on his own, was he?’
‘I think he was looking for someone. That’s what it looked like, when I spotted him. He seemed embarrassed to meet us—because of the conference, I suppose.’
‘And you didn’t mention this before, when you were interviewed?’
‘I wasn’t asked, was I? Anyway, it’s not important, is it?’
‘No, no. You’re right. I think we should do as he asked and just keep it to ourselves, don’t you?’
‘Thanks.’ Sharon grinned with relief. ‘I mean, it’s not as if it’s the first time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. He slips off for an hour or two sometimes and gets us to cover for him. Speedy used to reckon he had a secret girlfriend.’
‘What, Harry?’
‘Well, he’s not that old . . .’ Sharon blushed again. ‘I mean, he’s in pretty good nick. Considering.’
They both laughed and Kathy sat down beside her and they went through the list of all the security staff, checking off from the work schedules where they would have been on the Saturday.
When they were finished Kathy glanced out of the window again. Harry Jackson and his visitors had moved further on down the service road.
‘Okay, now I’d like to ask you to be discreet, Sharon.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I still have one or two loose ends from the Kerri Vlasich case that I should have tied up days ago, and I don’t want Gavin Lowry and the others knowing I forgot. I don’t think it’s important, see, but I have to put in a report. Maybe you could help me.’
‘Yeah, if I can.’
‘Okay, well, there was an entry in your daybooks for last August I needed to check.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Sharon offered, but Kathy took the photocopy of the missing page from her bag and showed it to her.
‘This is the one. Were you around on that week, do you remember?’
Sharon studied the entries. ‘That’s my handwriting and initials. The two cars broken into on the Wednesday. I remember now. It was hot. People were leaving their car windows cracked open.’
‘Right. What about the entry on Thursday, the confused woman?’
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