Standing Still

by Caro Ramsay

  Anderson had planned his day. They had solid leads to work and he felt that something would break today. He was letting Mulholland field all his calls, saying that he was at the hospital interviewing two vulnerable witnesses and wasn’t available for comment. The fact that Kirkton had previously availed himself of Alistair Jeffries’ professional expertise as part of his Safer Society campaign meant he would have to tread carefully. Any mistakes on his part would be fodder for the incompetent police argument and his cold case role could go down the drain. Amy was a victim and he could argue well to keep her out of the limelight. Batten was medically qualified and he could lend a lot of weight to that. Amy’s mum was very sensible and Anderson didn’t see her pushing to get her daughter splashed all over the papers. It was Jeffries, Kirkton and Police Scotland who were the weak links in the chain. If he was not careful Jeffries would be the way for Kirkton to get in to the investigation. He wondered what Walker had said to him, or promised him.

  As usual Anderson found a parking space at the Queen Elizabeth II University Hospital that was about four miles from where he wanted to be. In fact he was now nearer his own family home than he was to the coffee shop in the atrium where he had agreed to meet Batten.

  But the walk in the sunshine was pleasant, despite the noise of the constant digging and earth-moving that was going on. They were still building offices and wards and treatment rooms for the ever-expanding super hospital. More and more patients but still nowhere for them to park.

  Batten was sitting with an espresso, his pen in his hand held like a cigarette. He sported a filthy looking suede jacket and Iron Maiden T-shirt. He looked like he could be a Care in the Community patient waiting for his discharge papers. Anderson was wondering if his friend was on or off the fags. You could never tell with Mick. And his friend was starting to look old, much older than his years. Which again begged the question: was he on or off the drink? They shook hands warmly, both men gripping the other in a half embrace that was reciprocated. A true mutual friendship that had occasionally gone beyond the bounds of their respective work.

  ‘You compartmentalize your life,’ he recalled Brenda saying to him, or had he said it to Costello? Probably both. Maybe that’s the only reason their friendship had lasted so long, it tended to stay well within its own boundaries. Adjustable, flexible boundaries.

  ‘How is the coffee? Worth having?’

  ‘Passable, definitely passable.’ Batten pointed. ‘Over there, coffee’s good and she doesn’t try to sell you anything exotic with salted caramel.’

  Anderson got his coffee and started to walk towards the lift, making their way up to Alistair Jeffries’ single room.

  ‘So how did it go with Amy? Anything useful?’

  ‘Very interesting. Little Amy under hypnosis. Her version under hypnosis was exactly the same as her recall when not under hypnosis.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘It means she was abducted by a load of aliens and a man walking around in a space suit.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, everything points to the fact that she believes it. What that actually means is up to us to find out. No pressure.’ The lift doors opened with a slightly disapproving hiss. ‘Somebody whose memory under hypnosis is the same as their recalled memory is very rare, very rare indeed. So rare it’s bloody odd.’

  ‘But did you do it right?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ answered Batten coldly. ‘Is Mr Jeffries along here?’

  ‘Fourth room down,’ said Anderson, flicking his ID at a nurse who didn’t bother to look – just as Walker had said.

  Jeffries lay on the bed, snuggled up as if expecting an attack from somewhere, when the door opened. His eyes darted from Batten to Anderson and back again, like a condemned man’s door being opened by the Lord High Executioner.

  Anderson made introductions that were not needed, and hoped that Jeffries would not go back on his word. Amy’s mum was in the building, David was still missing. He would let Jeffries know that. If the old DCI held the key to all this in his subconscious mind, he had no moral right to deny them access. Anderson had no real plan B if Jeffries spouted the same crap that Amy had. But the doctor didn’t look that worried, so that in itself was indicative of something.

  Jeffries eyed the psychologist for a long time. ‘I recognize you, Dr Batten. I think I worked with you once.’

  ‘You did. You told me I was talking a lot of shite. That I wasn’t doing anything that wasn’t bloody obvious to a five-year-old and that I should go back to my colouring in.’ Batten’s voice was jovial, totally free of rancour as if he was rather proud that his professional opinion had been dismissed in such a way.

  ‘Sounds like me,’ admitted Jeffries. ‘And I bet I was wrong, not to accept them.’

  Anderson pulled up a seat and looked around for another.

  ‘Partially wrong. It’s always the balance between the practical and the theoretical,’ Batten conceded. ‘How are you keeping? You had a pretty nasty trauma to the head? Are you up for this?’

  ‘Well, I really want to tell both of you to fuck off but anything is better than lying here doing bugger all. You think I can help with this?’ he asked, his professional instincts were kicking in. He wanted to be involved; he had a lifetime of it. Only this time, he was the one who had been victimized and humiliated.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘He’s not going to make you dance like a chicken and give us your bank account details,’ assured Anderson.

  Jeffries smiled for the first time. ‘I dance like a chicken anyway and it’s my ex’s bank account details you would need. You are welcome to my overdraft any day.’

  ‘No ta, got one of my own,’ said Batten, sitting down on the seat that Anderson had found.

  The mood had lightened. ‘So, to recap, if done properly, accurate memories can be recalled under hypnosis. This is only supporting evidence and none of it is going anywhere near a courtroom. We need to get into your injured head and find out what your subconscious can recall. It knows what happened to you and who did it. Colin here needs the details of that retrieved memory.’

  The two detectives flicked a look at each other, a mutual nod of consent.

  ‘And the fact that the only other survivor of these attacks has no memory at all means that you are our only hope. So no pressure. We are going to use a deep relaxation protocol.’

  Batten did a countdown, telling Jeffries to allow his eyes to close. Anderson switched on the recorder and tried to listen closely, but found himself carried along, drifting slightly, relaxing deeper into the seat. It was suddenly very comfortable.

  Batten talked through a pleasant memory first, a few wisecracks going back and forth. Jeffries had his eyes closed but insisted his best memory was the day the police dog had chased the ACC up a tree. It was a well told story in the police force, so often told that nobody knew or cared if it was true. They had a laugh but Anderson noticed that Batten was gently nudging his subject into a deeper state of relaxation, talking about stuff away from work, his holidays. When Batten mentioned his family, tears ran down from the older man’s eyes. Batten took him back to a happier time when the kids were young. Jeffries was talking about a beach and a camping trip, making sandcastles and hunting for crabs in the rock pools.

  Even Anderson could see that Jeffries was totally at peace now. Batten nodded at Anderson, while his voice reinforced that Jeffries was relaxed, and happy. He was here in a safe place, thinking nice thoughts, and he told him that it was safe to remember. Batten then asked Jeffries to think of the time when he had got the scar on his elbow. Anderson hadn’t even noticed it but Jeffries started giggling like a child. He had been running along a rocky beach with an ice cream and had fallen. He had cut his elbow badly and the ice cream had melted. In his hypnotic, relaxed state, it was obvious from the tone of his voice that he had been very young when this had happened. He had been more upset at the ice cream melting than the blood streaming from the
cut, and the five stitches it had taken to heal it at a cottage hospital somewhere in the Western Isles that the two of them had never heard of. Batten shuffled in his seat, glancing at the recording device. Anderson heard somebody walk down the corridor coughing heavily as they went. If they weren’t a patient in here they bloody well should be.

  Batten was now telling Jeffries that he wanted to talk about the night he met his friends in the Rock. And if Jeffries was OK with that, he was to raise his finger.

  The pink puffy finger lifted slightly on the blue bed cover.

  ‘We want you to tell us the little details. Let them come to you when you are ready. You will become aware of what you saw, what you noticed, what you heard … or said … what you were feeling. That is a memory and you know that you are safe here. All this is just memory. You will remember everything of importance that there is to know, safe and comfortable in the knowledge that it is a memory and that all is well. The actual events are all in the past. You survived the event and you can survive the memory so, what happened when you were with your friends at the Rock? You were having a pint.’

  ‘Billy was texting some bird. I was watching the tennis on Sky Sport.’

  ‘Who was playing?’

  ‘Federer, somebody unpronounceable,’ came in the reply instantly.

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I was on my fifth pint. I needed a piss. I went to the loo. It was hot. I went out to the beer garden. No,’ he stopped himself. ‘She was at the door. She stops me.’

  Batten smiled at Anderson, the memory had moved into the present tense.

  ‘She stops me, she asks for help.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her name is Diana.’

  ‘And you know her?’

  Jeffries faltered, trying to think. He grimaced in his sleep-like state.

  ‘What is she like, Diana?’

  Jeffries was immediately back on track. ‘Nice wee blonde, tasty wee bit of stuff, OK wee lassie, you know.’

  ‘Who is Diana?’ asked Batten at Anderson’s prompt.

  ‘I don’t know but she had a flat tyre. She was nice, funny. She had had a wee bit to drink and she was joking about trying to change a tyre without getting a big man to come with a big wrench, and we walked away a little. We got talking, then she couldn’t find her car.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Others had parked, up the lane. We couldn’t see it.’

  ‘Did you see the car?’

  He faltered, his face pulled a puzzled expression.

  ‘You are OK, Alistair, relax. You are safe here in the hospital, all you are doing is recalling a memory. Did you see her car?’

  ‘No, not the car, but she was very pally.’ He giggled like a schoolboy copping a feel. ‘And we started messing about a bit. Then … now I am feeling really peculiar. I thought I was going to get lucky, you know, like she was hitting on me. There was no car, there was no car,’ he repeated. ‘No car.’ Then fell silent. ‘I remember thinking that she might be a pro, or that it might be a set-up by the ex, you know.’

  Batten and Anderson exchanged glances. How bad had the marriage break-up been?

  ‘So you started feeling poorly? What did Diana do?’

  ‘Diana is asking me if I am OK.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I felt ill, then I fell and she is trying to help me up. She’s lifting me, trying to help me. Then she leaves. She leaves me lying on the pavement.’

  ‘OK, can we go back to the car, can you see up the street, up the lane?’

  ‘There’s a red BMW. A white …’

  Anderson leaned forward. The only thing Wendy could recall about the car was the colour: white.

  ‘Dog shit on the pavement, there was a cat. It was very quiet. Only chit-chat from the pub. That’s all.’

  ‘And the cars?’

  Anderson wrote down ‘white car’ with a question mark.

  ‘Estate. Needed a new wing, rusty, don’t see much of that these days. Blue respray job.’

  ‘And across the way?’

  ‘Across the way?’ His eyelids moved as if he was looking round his brain for the answer. ‘White car parked up the side, quite new.’

  ‘Make?’ asked Anderson. ‘Number?’

  ‘Newish white car. Fiat?’

  ‘Did you notice the number?’

  ‘Can’t see it, the car was parked on the verge. There’s grass over the plate.’

  Anderson noted that. Visit the verge. That piece of info, if correct, could take them right to the location. To the trail of Blondie …

  ‘And then I fell, I don’t recall anything after that but coming here.’ Jeffries had his eyes closed, the lids flickered, struggling for a memory. ‘There was something. It scratched me. There are a lot of brambles along there, I must have brushed against them. Bloody sore it was. It was bloody sore then and it is bloody sore now.’

  ‘And where did it prick you?’

  ‘On my arse.’ He turned over slightly in the bed and pulled up the bed clothes. He pulled up his hospital gown to reveal a small red mark. ‘Right there, I got pricked right there.’

  It was the injection site.

  Batten turned to Anderson, everything had just fallen into place.

  But Anderson had fallen asleep.

  ‘Do you think that Alzheimer’s might be catching? I forgot where I parked the Panda yesterday,’ said Sandra.

  ‘There’s no hope for us if it is. Some of them are enough to drive you round the bend. See that Chic, he has told me the same joke for the last six months, at least three times a day. Twice while I was washing him. I mean you don’t really want to hear the one about the sausage and the nun, not in those circumstances. Not as if it was funny the first time,’ said Norma, flicking open the paper. ‘Good God have you seen this. They still haven’t identified the body found at the end of the road. What are the police doing?’

  ‘Said on Facebook that he was folded into a box.’

  ‘And they think that it’s a serial killer. There’s that wee Paige lassie as well. I mean folk don’t disappear off the streets these days, do they?’

  They can when they want to, thought Sandra, but said, ‘No, I don’t suppose they do.’ She looked out over the street from the staff room, seeing the CCTV camera sitting on the light like a vulture waiting. She couldn’t help feeling a wee bit superior.

  She was becoming part of something here, something above all this gossip about little people. Runaways like Paige, that’s where Sandra had come from but that was not where she was going back to. She was moving on and up with Paolo, with or without the Duchess. She let her colleagues chatter on, lost in her own wee world, thinking of Paolo coming out the shower yesterday, looking very handsome with a towel wrapped round his waist. He said that he had to go somewhere important and needed a quick freshen up. He had then asked Sandra what sort of day she was having, not just casually. He asked her like he was really interested.

  Then before she left, he had called after her. ‘Sandra?’ he had said, just like that he called her by her name. ‘Sandra, that lipstick is too dark for you. I’ll buy you something better, something more suited.’

  And now she was here in the staffroom with the other carers, the skanks, talking about how drunk they had been on a hen weekend in Benidorm. She hadn’t been invited. She wondered where Paolo lived. Must be local if he didn’t need his car; he had given it to Sandra. He did odd hours so maybe he was a doctor, and that might be why he had swung a disability badge for the Panda even though the Duchess never went out. So near the old Western? Up on Byres Road or if he was really high up, like a consultant or something, then he might be along Westerton or Jordanhill.

  ‘Paolo Girasole’s not married, is he?’ she asked, fishing for more information by casually dropping him into the conversation. She regretted it immediately as they started laughing. She was back again at the school in the playground, turning up for a new school term in a coat her mum had got from a charity shop. Halfw
ay through playtime Isla Brodie had pointed at her, laughing, shrieking that the coat had just been chucked out by her mum. She felt sick at the memory. That would never happen to her again

  ‘Him? No way, he’s a right mummy’s boy. I mean I think he likes his mother, you know, really likes her. All that dressing her up and doing all her personal care, that’s not bloody normal. She’s an old bag, rich old bag. Have you seen her clothes?’

  ‘I mean, nobody gets to look at her underwear. He takes it all home, probably dresses up in it. Or he dresses her up in it and does it with her in the shower.’

  ‘Couple of bloody weirdoes.’

  Sandra felt herself blush.

  ‘Do you fancy him, seriously? Really? Oh my God.’ Lisa pointed at Sandra, her hand over her mouth laughing. ‘He is gay, you prat!’ And they laughed, and laughed, but not unkindly. They thought her rather unworldly. She was right back in the playground again.

  Lisa took her by the arm and shook her a little. ‘Come on, Sandra, you must have noticed.’

  But Tracey wasn’t for letting up, ‘Jesus, you do fancy him?’

  Then Lisa said, ‘Watch yourself, Sandra, seriously. Watch yourself, if the boss finds out you will be out of here. Be careful, girl, don’t even joke about that kind of thing. The management have no sense of humour. Paolo likes you, he thinks you are good for the Duchess but if they sack you, you will be out on your ear and there’s not a damn thing you or he can do about it. Look at what happened to Becky. And Caroline. That was nasty. Her husband’s on disability and they still sacked her. They are shit, them upstairs. James Kirkton is a shifty wee bastard, Pearcy is the same. It’s all about the money for them. All the money in the world and not an ounce of compassion. I’m telling you.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’ started Sandra but was interrupted.

  ‘Oh you were, I’ve seen you come into work, all dolled up,’ said Lisa, giggling.