by Caro Ramsay
Wendy raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what you mean?’
‘She didn’t have it ten minutes earlier on the CCTV. So what did she do with it in the meantime – the blonde woman?’
Wendy thought. ‘Sorry, when I saw her, she had the chair.’
‘Could you recognize the woman if you saw her again?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And the car? If we put some pictures in front of you, would you be able to identify it?’
‘Yes, I think so, and it had a disabled sticker.’
‘Did you see the car drive off?’
Wendy looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well, it was parade day so she did a U-turn, and went straight across Byres Road. It was behind one of the sound units.’ She smiled. ‘I held up the cars on Vinicombe Street to let her get round. It was so busy.’
And there it was; how the body got across the busy street. Costello made a mental note to look at the CCTV again, find the car.
‘How did she seem, the woman? Her demeanour? Anything odd about her?’
‘Not at all, just as she always seemed. A little harassed maybe but that was because it was busy and she was pushing the chair through all those people. There was nothing odd about her.’
‘But?’ asked Anderson picking up on her verbal cue.
‘The boot of the car had a jewellery box in it.’ Wendy laughed. ‘I thought it was odd. It was lying there. I thought, I bet her daughter borrows her jewellery so she keeps it in the boot. I had a friend who used to do that. Strange but true.’ Wendy gave another little laugh.
Costello asked, ‘Can you describe the car for me?’
‘Yes, it was white.’
Sandra looked round the day room, all was well. The residents were children, they had to be settled and kept amused but once they had fallen asleep, they could be left alone. They fell asleep quickly in this place, quicker than they had in any of the other homes. There was no pacing up and down, anxiously wringing their hands, stuttering on the same word over and over again or shouting obscenities at each other like the bar at a Tourette’s convention.
They were better behaved at Athole House, compared to the other homes Sandra had worked in. They turned to jelly after a while. The place was tranquil, beautiful but soulless and deathly quiet. Maybe the torpor ate into their bodies until there was no way out but to capitulate.
Sandra ghosted up the stairs and slid into Tosca. She checked the time on the Gothic clock on the mantelpiece. It was her break now. Lynda had taken over downstairs, sitting in the centre of the day room and listening to the snoring of the other two, deep in post prandial sleep. Lynda could give Kilpatrick his cup of tea and his digestive biscuit. They had to be dunked for him since the old scrote had lost the use of his hands in the fire. He’d also lost his wife so the rumour went. The fire had been in a friend’s house, round the corner from here. Just behind the building where they found the body yesterday, according to the care home gossip. The police had been three times so far. Twice by normal uniform and the plain clothes police had been in to see Paolo about the phone. Sandra knew she had to stay calm and keep below the radar.
She was aware Kilpatrick had items of value in his room, and he had no eagle-eyed visitors to keep tabs on his stuff. He must have money as he had been here for years and, so far, there had been no talk of him being transferred. One of the owners, a nasty little doctor called Pearcy, was very quick to claim the resident would be better transferring to a nursing home as the secure living facility did not cater for those who needed nursing. Or couldn’t pay for it any longer. There was a joke about absent relatives paying extra to have their relatives taken downstairs to where the bins were, never to be seen again.
Although Sandra knew how keen people were to get on with their lives and jettison the baggage of the elderly, the dribbly and the incontinent, she had been attentive when she had witnessed some covert behaviour going on downstairs; Matron Nicholson and Pearcy were either having an affair or being enthusiastic about counting their money.
It was Philippa Walker Sandra was wary of; her husband was a cop or a lawyer or something. Pippa had more pearls than functioning brain cells. Too many to notice if any went missing, but her husband just might. Her man was the law so Sandra was steering clear of her. In fact, Pippa Walker being here bothered Sandra more than she cared to admit. What if he wanted a look at the employment history of the staff? That would be the first port of call if anything happened. Even something that Sandra had not actually done; one of the oldies could genuinely flush a valuable piece of jewellery down the loo or swallow an earring. Or die in their sleep unexpectedly. Pippa’s man might think it was odd and get it investigated, he had that power. For Sandra that would be bad news.
It didn’t stop her planning though. Last week she had wandered into Deke Kilpatrick’s room while he was lying in the bed, covered in a single sheet. She had wedged the door open as she looked around, knowing he was watching her through his good eye but was unable to do much about it. He could only move his right arm, so she was fine if she kept clear of that. He had a record player in here, a pile of LPs stacked in exactly the same order they were on her previous visit. They were all by singers she had never heard of. She had moved on to the brass tray on his dressing table. Nice cufflinks and a signet ring that felt heavy and therefore valuable; marked and monogrammed so no value to her. The emerald ring with the diamonds had attracted her the most. Deke grunted if she touched it, the only response that ever came from him.
Did this belong to the wife who had burned in the fire? Was she wearing it when she jumped? There was a whole arc of photographs arranged so he could see them, neatly framed on the chest of drawers, all beautifully shot. The sort of thing that Sandra would have liked for herself, the pictures of a life lived. Sandra leaned against the dresser and slid the ring up and down her finger so that Deke could see. Then she returned it to the box, she always would but he didn’t know that. Her favourite taunt was to walk round his room slowly, holding a pillow. Looking at him and looking at the pillow. As if checking that it would fit over his face.
Now she had bigger fish to fry.
Alone up in Tosca, she opened the wardrobe and began to finger the silks and the linens and the pure cashmere wools. She had her eye on a fuchsia jacket. That would look marvellous against her skin. She held it up to her, letting it slither off the hanger, then ruffled the wool sleeve under her chin seeing how it clashed with her face. The Duchess had a typical Italian complexion, Sandra’s was more Ruchill than Rome; grey, flecked with skin tone, and pale blue eyes. She looked anaemic even when she was perfectly healthy.
Paolo didn’t look much like the Duchess though. But he had said that people from Northern Italy looked more northern. That was how he had put it. And of course Italians had moved about a lot, goodness knew what was deep inside his DNA. Sandra pulled the woollen jacket over her navy blue uniform. She slipped her bare feet out of the fake Crocs she had bought down the market for a few quid, standard wear in the home as they were so comfortable and so quiet. Not that it mattered here as this lot slept through anything, the result of good soundproofing, she reckoned.
Sandra looked at the bottom of the wardrobe; boxes. Of course the Duchess’s shoes would be kept in those yellowed boxes, aged but not dusty. Paolo hated dust and Sandra always made sure that Elsa, the young Polish cleaner who cleaned the four biggest rooms, always vacuumed inside the wardrobe as well as outside. Paolo approved of that.
He was too observant though. He’d notice immediately if anything went missing, so Sandra had changed her plans, now a bigger prize was in sight.
Sandra’s heart was thumping, her fingers trembling, reaching out towards the top box, lifting it slightly to look at the picture on the front. A little drawing of the shoes it contained with the word ‘blu’. Well that didn’t need a lot of translation. She was looking for the shoes that matched this jacket; everything the Duchess owned matched something else. ‘Rosa’. She took them out. The shoes
had been wound in fine tissue paper, each wrapped separately, then together. That would be Paolo. She wondered what he would do when his mother died. Sandra was going to work here until that day happened, and be so nice to Paolo that he would see her for what she was, what she was pretending to be. She sat down on the double bed with its huge amount of cushions, all in the best linen, Italian cotton or Belgian lace. She sat carefully on the end, her arms now in the jacket sleeves and her feet slipped into each shoe. They were made of fine leather, handmade and so soft, so incredibly supple they wrapped round the curves of her feet. As she stood up, the slight cushioning on the sole eased her feet onto the carpet. They had a nice heel, slim and elegant but not so high as to be tarty. The kind of heel Queen Elizabeth would have worn in her young days.
Sandra stood tall. The shoes made her feel slimmer, streamlined, not that she carried much weight. She thought that she and the Duchess had a very similar build although Sandra was a bit taller, more Paolo’s height. She turned to the mirror, pulling up her short hair into a small bun at the back of her head, pouting, then looking demur, then smiling, imagining going to a Christmas party. No, somebody’s engagement. No, a wedding. Yes, an Italian society wedding and saying, ‘Oh me? I am with Paolo, yes one of those Girasoles. The opera people.’
She heard the buzzer go at the front door. Matron would be expecting a member of staff to appear in case somebody needed showing round or taken somewhere, even keeping an eye on in case they wanted to see something that the guests of the residents were never, ever allowed to see. Like the bins. Or the basement. Guests were invited to look at the kitchens, the wet rooms, the infection control protocols and the state-of-the-art automatic drug dispensers that were housed on each floor, too secure for Sandra to get into.
She slid off the shoes and then carefully wrapped the shoes back in the tissue paper as well as she could, but it was like folding a map. She could hear footfall coming up the carpeted stairs. That was somebody who did not know the building well. They were walking up the middle of each stair, the squeaks heralding their arrival. Sandra knew better, she was skilled at ghosting around this building.
She replaced the box containing the pink shoes under the box containing the blue shoes and squared up the stack. Her heart raced a little with the thought that she could work her way through the whole pile. She put the jacket back on the hanger and placed in its original position on the rack. Paolo would notice immediately if it had been replaced wrongly. She checked the room before she left it, noticing the flattened area on the bedspread where her weight had been settled. She smoothed it out.
She opened the door of Tosca again, closing it quickly behind her.
The grey-haired man in the smart suit on the stairs said hello, stepping sideways slightly to block her path.
‘Hello, Mr Walker, isn’t it?’
He was a handsome man, lightly tanned faced with friendly bushy eyebrows and steely blue eyes. A bit too old, a bit too small for her, too well dressed. He was the fiscal or the cop. She hoped the alarm didn’t show on her face.
‘Yes, Sandra?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was wondering how you thought Philippa was settling in? She seems to have been asleep since she came here. Is she OK?’
‘She is fine.’ Sandra turned to walk along the hall, passing over the top of the sweeping staircase. ‘Let me reassure you, I am not an expert but I have noticed in my time working with Alzheimer’s, especially those with “unsettled torpor”, you know, where they are still aware of the … well, you know, reality?’
‘Ones who are aware that they don’t recall all they should?’
‘Yes. It keeps them awake. I heard Dr Pearcy say that by the time they get here, the patient and the family are totally exhausted. I’m sure you have been catching up on sleep, and so is she.’
‘Obvious when you think about it,’ agreed Archie Walker, thinking how great, and how guilty, he had felt on that first morning; a full, unbroken sleep through the night when Philippa was at the care home. He had no concept of how exhausted he had been. It had become such a way of life; her illness had become his way of life.
‘So when they get here, I think they feel safe and they sleep.’ She smiled, she had a nice smile, what his mother would have called homely. ‘And that can only be good for them.’
‘She’s asleep now, should I wake her up or …?’
Sandra consulted the watch hung upside down from her breast pocket. She had wanted that ever since she was a wee girl, and an absent-minded theatre nurse had later obliged. ‘Well, she has just had something to eat and they like to have a little sleep after that.’
‘Maybe I’ll pop in and see that she is OK.’
‘OK, but they do get into the routine in here very quickly, don’t be surprised if she is deep in snooze land. I’ll be about on the landing if you need anything. In fact, I could rustle you up a cup of tea or coffee?’
‘That would be lovely, Sandra, thank you. It is Sandra, isn’t it?’ he confirmed.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Sandra Ryme.’
But he did look at her for an extra beat, a quizzical narrowing of the eye, a crinkling of his forehead. As if he knew.
Archie Walker had a good game plan. An hour after he left the care home, he was walking through the vast atrium of the Queen Elizabeth II University Hospital with zero enthusiasm for life and the frailty of the human condition. He felt better now, fuelled by black coffee and a pain au chocolate. He got on OK with most of the cops he had worked with. He might not have liked them, but they could rub along together and get the job done.
Then there was Alistair Jeffries, a man Walker would cross the road to run over.
Walker picked up a copy of Classic Hi Fi magazine, then thought again and put it down to choose the Top Gear one instead. He could recall Jeffries having a souped-up car with an exhaust that announced his arrival at a crime scene from about a mile away. Then he bought a packet of shortbread and a bottle of Lucozade at the shop and checked that the envelope of photographs was still tucked underneath his suit jacket before setting off again across the vast concourse that looked like an aircraft hangar designed by a Lego fan.
All very trendy.
All very pretty.
All very noisy.
While being built it was known locally as the Death Star but the news that the super hospital was to be named the Queen Elizabeth II University Hospital, had it immediately rechristened ‘Sweaty Bettys’. No matter what they called it, the towers with the wards still smelled of hospital: of antibiotic spray, stewed apples and death. The atrium, though, smelled more like an airport: coffee beans and pesto. Walker made his way to the lifts. He had been here with Pippa often enough. He knew where he was going, he didn’t need the map. He checked ward and bed number, showing his ID when he was half challenged by a bored nurse. She lifted her head from her computer screen at the nursing station and tilted her head down the long corridor.
All he could see was white wall and more white wall.
The new hospital was all single-room occupancy, which, as Walker strode past window after window, reminded him of a zoo. He looked into each room to see if there was anything interesting going on. Some inhabitants looked vacantly at the screen hanging on a metal arm over the bed. He heard snatches of a pointless TV quiz through open doors. Others were asleep. Or dead and nobody had noticed yet. The young chap in room 10 looked as though he could beat the fiscal in a hundred-meter sprint. The old man in room 12 looked hopefully at Walker as if he might be the Grim Reaper, before turning his head away in disappointment.
In room 14 a plump man, chin grizzled with dull stubble, lay on his back, propped up on a mountain of pillows, reading a western. He was still attached to the drip, an oxygen tube taped onto his top lip like a comedy white moustache. Walker stayed at the door, to make sure before raising his hand and knuckling the door. The occupant of the bed responded with a slow head turn.
Alistair Jeffries smiled, a sore bitter grin, eyes narr
owed with the pain. He curled his fingers at the door, Come in, come in. ‘Archie Walker? Christ – have I died and gone to hell?’
‘Not yet. But we live in hope. How are you feeling?’ Walker tried to be friendly; well, not friendly, more concerned and professionally polite. He was banking on the fact that Jeffries would be up for some fiscal baiting.
‘I am bored out my tiny skull. My tiny fractured skull.’ He pointed to his bandaged head. ‘I am going to be pensioned off after this. Years on the beat chasing nutters up blind allies, kicking Dobermans in the balls and never got a scratch. And now this, career over. Good bye and thank you.’
‘No problem with your speech then, Alistair.’
‘I’ve been in the force twenty-five years and the only injury I have ever suffered was a sore face when I chatted up Costello at the Christmas party.’
‘You got away lightly.’
‘She’s a cow. I heard the rumour that you were shagging her?’ Jeffries sucked at his lips, making a noise like the aspirator at the dentist. Walker made a show of giving that some thought.
‘I heard that rumour too, but as I still have my testicles intact, we were obviously misinformed.’ Walker handed over the Lucozade.
‘No vodka then?’
‘No.’ Walker pulled up a seat. ‘We need to talk.’
‘No, we don’t. You are not the boss of me.’
‘Correct.’
‘I was jumped. I banged my head. Unlucky, that’s all.’
‘It was a nasty injury.’
‘Consistent with my head hitting the corner of the pavement, that’s all.’ Jeffries pulled a face, like he was sucking something that had been caught in his teeth. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Following up some vague thoughts,’ he answered, opening the shortbread and offering some to Jeffries in an attempt to stop that awful noise. He put the magazine on the bedside table. ‘Alistair. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. Neither of us have an issue with that.’ He placed the picture of Mr Hollister, lying in the mortuary, on top of the magazine. The lack of colour in the skin, the wet hair swept off his face, made him look about ten years old. Walker wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. ‘But you have done the job a long time. Look at that and then tell me what happened to you. It was a mugging but nobody touched your wallet? You were not hit on the head, you fell. The admission officer at A & E noted that you had a red mark on your left buttock, like an injection site. But your GP said that you are not on any injectable medication.’