Stronger Than Death

by Manda Scott

  ‘Lee, you don’t have to …’ The hand tightened on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. ‘Do you want me to call Doug?’

  ‘No … not now. No point …’

  And then Jessica was there on the other side of the bed, her hand on a pulse, the other changing the drip rate on the fluids flooding down the drip line. The nurse stood behind her, drawing up dopamine, waiting for the order to inject. She has her own priorities. ‘Inspector, you can do this later.’

  ‘There might not be a later.’ His eyes were hungry, feeding on the sheen of her face, on the tremor of her hands. ‘Dr Adams?’ His voice was generous. ‘Do we stop now?’

  ‘No …’ Her fingers tightened round my wrist, a hand-hold over the final fall.

  ‘So tell me how Professor Duncan died.’

  ‘Shot … then hanged … for the signature.’

  ‘Or hanged and then shot. Far more satisfying to watch, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘No … couldn’t have … He …’ She coughed. The nurse leant forward and wiped the spittle from her mouth. More red than clear.

  MacDonald waved her away. ‘One step at a time. There’s no rush. Go back to the beginning, Dr Adams.’ He took the tissue himself, wiped her dry, smoothed the hair from her forehead, slowed her down until the rattle cleared in her breath. He has done this before: nursed his way to a bedside confession. You’d never know from the way he asks that he wants anything more than an end to the pain. ‘Go back to when you left your flat this morning. Six o’clock, was it? Just after?’

  ‘Half past.’

  ‘Close enough. You left by the back door. Why?’

  ‘Needed to see Professor Duncan. Needed to talk. Didn’t want you listening.’

  ‘Really? That’s very ungrateful. And why was it so important to see him?’

  ‘The killings … knew why … obvious why … not obvious who. Thought if he would publish the old records … Beth, the others … it might stop …’

  ‘But he didn’t have the records, Dee had them.’ I stopped. Not my place. She looked at me for a moment, unseeing, then her eyes moved back to his. All that holds her now is his need to know. Her need for him to know.

  ‘I called Jessica on the way … to ask the directions … he’s moved since I …’

  ‘Since you last worked together. Dr Duncan, can you confirm this?’ He sent his voice across the bed without moving his eyes. ‘What time did Dr Adams call you?’

  ‘Just before seven. I was starting the morning pre-meds.’

  She has stopped working. Her eyes are on the monitors but she does nothing to change what she sees. The priorities have changed. There is a consensus now, to wait. She could die in front of them and still they would wait.

  Lee’s head rocked on the bed. She looked over towards Jessica. So she does know who it was that kept her alive on the table.

  ‘You must have called him. Told him I was coming … ?’

  ‘I did. He asked me to tell him if anyone called.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call him yourself?’ MacDonald, gently bringing her back on line. He can’t afford distractions now.

  ‘Didn’t want him to know … if he thought …’ She lost the place, shook her head, frowning, and started again. ‘You thought it was me. He knew that.’

  ‘You had reason to believe he might think you had killed his son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you went to visit him unannounced. Go on.’

  ‘Traffic was bad. Got there late. Eight o’clock … five past … Parked the bike in the drive. He must have heard it, and …’

  ‘And what?’ The line between them is breaking, like a rope rubbing on the edge, thin strands of it peeling away under the tension. He is losing her and he knows it. He moved round beside me, his hand on the bed, his face filling the world above hers. ‘And you walked in through his front door and up to his office and killed him. Hanged him and shot him. Or the other way round. We’ll have the PM report soon enough and then we’ll know which it was. But what I need to know, what I can’t quite picture, is exactly how you did it, Dr Adams. How did you get a big man like that hanging from the ceiling? Tell me. Did you hold the gun on him and make him set the rope up himself, is that it?’

  ‘No.’ She is fighting, as he is fighting, to hold the thread between them. ‘Not me. Him. Parked the bike … shot came just after … Him. Not me.’

  ‘What? He did it himself? Come on, Dr Adams, you can do better than that. We’ve been through this too often, you and me. You have to give me something I can believe in.’ His hand is on her shoulder. He would shake, but he can see Jessica moving in. He is breathing too fast, as much as she is. ‘Come on, Lee, it doesn’t matter now. Just tell me. I need to know how you did it.’

  ‘No … not me … not now … if I …’ It was like watching a fire, a dying fire, a last flicker of flame from the embers. She drew in the dregs of whatever reserves she had left, and just for that moment, the irony flared where he could see it. ‘I wouldn’t have waited … this long …’

  And he lost her. Dropped from the hook like a foul-caught salmon. Gone.

  ‘Shit.’ He slammed his fist against the side of the bed, turned away and paced the full length of the ward.

  They moved in then: Jessica, her nurse, another orderly. Wild, erratic spasms gripped the monitors. Nothing at all showed in the body on the bed.

  I peeled her fingers away from my wrist and stepped back. Four nail marks stood out purple against the soft underskin of my arm. I said nothing to Jessica or to the nurse or MacDonald. There was nothing, just then, I could say.

  Stewart MacDonald came back to the bedside. He chewed on the edge of one thumbnail. He has drained her. He has got all he can get, possibly all he is ever going to get. Still he does not look happy.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Kellen …’ He put out a hand, thought again and let it drop to his side. ‘All I can do is ask the questions.’

  ‘No. You can do more than that, Inspector. You can find the answers. Get your minions out there and find who heard the gunshot and who else saw her park the bike. Either she was in the house before he died or she wasn’t. It can’t be that difficult to find out which.’

  ‘Maybe …’ He gave the nod to the guard on the door. The radio crackled over the layered sounds of the resuscitation team. We moved back even farther out of the way. MacDonald’s eyes never moved from the bed. He chewed again at the edge of the nail. ‘It’s a funny way to kill yourself, Dr Stewart.’

  ‘He needed to leave the signature, remember? And it was still fast. Faster than Hillary Murdoch.’ I remembered the look in her eyes, the dread, beyond terror, when she saw the needle and believed it was suxamethonium. ‘You’d go a fair way not to die the way she did.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t leave a note, you don’t think? Most suicides leave a note.’

  ‘Christ, man, do you need it spelled out? He was seventy-five years old, he thought he was about to die and he believed absolutely that she’d just murdered his son and three of his closest colleagues. What possible reason would he have to leave a note?’

  I stayed with her for a day and a night, sleeping on the camp bed and eating sandwiches from the canteen. Mike Bailey did come eventually, smelling of alcohol and with his pupils sparked out in the light. I slept, I think, for most of the time he was there. The day after that, they took her off the ventilator and Jessica stood down the nurses. Later in the afternoon, when the monitors showed numbers I could believe in, I walked down the long way to the Unit and took Nicco Gallianno his letter. He lay propped up in the bed, his dressing gown hanging loose from his shoulders, his skin one stage closer to final hepatic shut-down. He looked up as I walked in, the wide, dark eyes set deeper than they had been.

  ‘You came.’ He smiled at that.

  ‘I said I would.’

  He looked me up and down and took in the unwashed hair and the over-worn clothes. The smile broadened and moved over on the bed to give me space. ‘Your friend,’
he asked. ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘More or less. She’s in intensive care.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Will she get better?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s too early to say.’ I lit a candle by the bedside, then pulled the letter from a pocket. ‘I brought you this.’

  There were two pages there, close-printed script. He read them through and then folded both carefully back into the envelope. ‘She’s dead now? The one who wrote this?’

  ‘Dee? I don’t know. She’s gone. The police found her car yesterday at the top of the cliff where Eric died. It wasn’t there when they went back to look for it the other evening after we took Lee off.’

  ‘So she’d gone away and come back?’

  ‘The car had gone away and come back. There’s nothing to say she was in it.’

  ‘But the water’s deep out there.’

  ‘Very.’ The police divers have gone down and down again for the gun. They haven’t found it. I know of no one who believes that they will.

  ‘So.’ He looked out across the lawn and smiled quietly to himself: white teeth in the darkened umber of his face. In time he turned back to me. ‘She says it’s the last retreat of the coward to die without good reason.’

  ‘I think she was trying to say that joining Paul is not a good enough reason.’

  ‘She didn’t know him.’

  ‘We didn’t know Beth.’ I stood up. The candle flared and gave off sandalwood smoke. ‘It’s not too late, Nicco. There’s still time if they can find a match.’ His eyes followed me as I left the room. Great, dark oceans of sanity. ‘Will you think about it? Please?’

  ‘Of course.’ His smile was warm and rich and he meant it. ‘I think about everything these days, Kellen.’

  He died the day before Lee came home and I was with him, as he had asked. We held his funeral three days later: a riot of colour and sound, a celebration of community and a quiet honouring of his parents.

  It was the week for funerals. Small private ceremonies were held for Hillary Murdoch and Martin Coutts in the days immediately following Nicco’s extravaganza. At the weekend, Nina and I took Lee, at Jessica’s request, to join the mass of Scotland’s medics in the Cathedral for a display of dignity and gravitas such as only a profession under threat can achieve. Jessica alone found the words to remind us who her husband had really been. She earned few friends amongst the hierarchy and many amongst the rest of us. Towards the end of the month, when Lee could walk the length of a room without support, we held a very small, very simple service for Eric. Anna came, and his parents. We spoke, but nothing of meaning. After that, there was nothing left to do but wait.

  I woke in the small hours of the morning as I have woken every morning for as long as I can remember. I lay half awake on top of the duvet, drifting into dreams I didn’t want. Downstairs, someone placed the receiver back in its cradle and the soft ting of its passing rang in the phone by the bed. A while later, dog claws clattered on the quarry tiles of the kitchen floor. A tap ran for a moment and the kettle grated on the Rayburn. Later still, the back door opened and closed. I pulled on a T-shirt and went down to look. She was outside, sitting on the back step, her hands wrapped round a mug of something hot that wasn’t coffee. I sat down on the stone trough beside her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Alive.’ She blew across the top of the mug. ‘I just called Mhaire.’

  At half past three in the morning. ‘Was she awake?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked up at the sky. It was a mild night and very clear. The ghost light of the moon painted out the lines around her eyes. She looked tired beyond exhaustion but she did not look ill. The night is good for these things. She leant back against the door. ‘I gather you’ve risen somewhat in her estimation.’

  Hardly. ‘I didn’t tell you what she said.’

  ‘No. But I think you did all you were supposed to do.’

  I don’t want to know. ‘And now?’

  ‘Pass.’ She lowered the mug to the step. ‘She’s been tapping her sources. She seems to think we might hear something in the morning.’

  ‘From MacDonald?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We sat in silence. Ponies cropped grass. The dog sighted rabbits in the far distance and decided to leave them be. The cold of the stone began to make itself felt through my T-shirt. I stood up. ‘Are you going back to bed?’

  ‘No. I thought I’d sit here for a while.’ She looked up. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ I am desperate for lack of sleep and I am sick with the waiting and the fear of what is to come, but I have no reason, now, to mind anything she does. I dropped a hand to her shoulder. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘You will. Sleep well.’

  She was wrong. They were both wrong. We did not hear anything from anyone in the morning. Nor the morning after that, nor the ones beyond until I forgot that the conversation had ever happened. Life went on. It wasn’t normal, but there was an unvoiced agreement that we would treat it as if it was. Sandy, Kirsty and Jon ran the treks. Nina went into work. I found things to do that never took me far from the farm. The Unit closed beds and took in fewer patients and that way managed without two of its staff. Lee spent her days with the dog and the cat and her nights watching the moon. If she slept, I didn’t see it.

  It was a Saturday afternoon in August when he came. We were in the yard, all of us. Sandy was with the colt. Jon and Kirsty were worming the mares and foals for something to do between rides. Maddie was lame with pus in the foot. I held her while Nina dug out her sole with a hoof knife. Lee sat on a bale with the dog and worked saddle soap into a bridle. It was the sound of her stopping, the no-sound where there had been sound, that made me turn round. The riders from the last trek had driven in convoy out of the yard and up the lane and he slipped through in their wake, unheard and unseen. His car sat on the far side of the gate. He didn’t get out. Lee put the bridle down on the bale and looked up at me. ‘Will you do this? Please? I’d rather it came from you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The yard is an infinity of distance. He gets out and comes forwards to lean on the gate. He has no one with him, which is surprising. No one from work. No dog at his heels. He shrugs off his jacket and throws it in the car as I reach him.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Getting better. She’ll climb again if she’s given time.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Kellen, I’m not here to—’

  ‘Just tell me.’ I feel dead inside. I can hear it in my voice. A voice without hope. Because there is no hope. Because there is, after all, no real way to prove what she said and we all knew that from the start. The timing was too tight. Too few people in that douce suburban dead-end had any idea of what they saw or when and none of them could time with any accuracy the arrival of a motorbike to a gunshot they are not even sure that they heard. The only surprise is that she has chosen to wait this long before she follows Nicco Gallianno into the dark. And she will follow him. Not the same way perhaps, but the end result will be the same. We have not discussed this but we both know it to be true. So I stand by the gate and I watch her leave the bridle on the bale and walk inside and suddenly I am too afraid to look at him.

  He puts a hand on the gate, begins to lift the latch. I cover it with mine. ‘No. Not now.’

  ‘I came to talk to Lee.’

  ‘You can talk to me instead. It only takes one word, MacDonald.’

  ‘All right, then. If that’s the way you want it.’

  She had gone inside to the office to sit in front of the computer. The cat lay across her knees, his head dangling loosely at the side. The monitor spun stars into a backdrop of Eric’s Cliff, a glorious shot, all sun and rock and polarised sky, taken from the boat long before there was any reason to name it for the one who held the camera. In the farm, this is the closest she can get to him. I stood outside on the grass beyond the open french windows. She spun the chair to face me.

&n
bsp; ‘And?’

  I moved in and stood behind her, resting my hands on her shoulders, my thumbs on the taut muscles at the sides of her neck. Her skin twitched once under my hands and was still. She watched me in the reflection from the monitor. Her eyes asked the question again. She has more courage than I do. I would wait. I would not want to hear.

  I said it quickly, to get it over. ‘They’ve dropped the case, Lee. Randolph Duncan’s body has been released. The funeral’s set for next Tuesday. You’re clear.’

  She stared at me blankly, her eyes holding mine, the glass veil of the monitor blurring the sense of it. ‘What about the trial?’

  ‘There isn’t going to be any trial.’ I said it again: ‘They’ve dropped the case.’

  It was so far from what she expected, from what either of us expected. Her hands lay still on the keyboard. The cat sat up, pushing the top of his head on her forearm for attention. She toyed, unthinking, with his chin. ‘Why?’

  ‘They’ve found a witness. A groundsman with decent hearing who can tell a Ducati from a Yamaha and knows how to read the time. He heard you stop. He heard the shot. He can pick out your bike from among five others revved up behind a wall and he’s prepared to stand up in court and swear that the gunshot came within seconds of you cutting the engine. Apparently, as far as he’s concerned, you wouldn’t have had time to pull your key from the ignition before the gun went off. It’s as watertight as they’re ever going to get. There’s no case left to answer. They’d be wasting public money if they took you to court. You’re clear. It’s over.’

  The change was sudden when it came. I felt it in my hands at first: the flooding, almost crippling relief, flowing through in the way the morphine had flowed through in the ward. She closed her eyes and leant her full weight back in the chair. Her head tilted backwards to rest on my ribs. Her neck eased enough to take the weight of my thumb and not bruise. ‘God, Kellen …’