The nurse smiled as he led the way, opening the heavy metal door with a key that hung from a metal loop on his belt. He was nice. He’d told her his name. Several times. But she could never remember. His uniform, a tunic and trousers, was black, with thick black shoes that reached up to his ankle. A far cry from the nurses she’d remembered as a child, who were always women, and wore crisp starched aprons with snow-white caps on their heads.
His arm bore a tattoo of a fox with a red rose underneath. Dorothy could see it through the thick brown curly hairs; the fox seemed to be smiling. Above his left wrist the names Louise and Mike picked out in elaborate writing. ‘My wife and my boy’, he’d once told her, tapping his finger on the names. Dorothy had had a boy once.
Her legs no longer felt heavy and she didn’t seem to sleep as much. She was allowed into the garden too and managed to grow things. They said she was good at that. She never answered them, wasn’t sure if she still had a voice. Perhaps they’d taken that away.
‘Come on, love.’ His voice was kind and soft as he closed the heavy door behind them. ‘D’you know what day it is, Dot?’
Even if she could speak she wasn’t sure she’d say, in case she got it wrong. It might have been Wednesday, but maybe not.
‘It’s your birthday, Dot.’ He smiled again. He was nice. So few of them were. Another key, another door.
My birthday?
‘And you’ve got a special visitor.’
He gave her shoulder a gentle pat and suddenly the door slammed shut. Dorothy turned to grab his arm. The nurse with the kind voice, but he was gone.
‘Hello, Dorothy.’
He sat in the soft chair by the window, legs crossed, the sun behind him so she couldn’t see his face. But she knew who he was.
34
Glasgow 2002
She drove north towards Maryhill then turned right into Lochburn Road. The block of art deco flats was on her right, built on the site of the old Magdalene Institution. Oonagh wondered if pain and sadness could linger in the soil and her thoughts drifted back to Irene Connolly. She continued up towards the cemetery and took a sharp turn at the roundabout. The sprawling graveyard suddenly came into view and the Campsie Fells were prevalent in the distance. It was April and they still had a light dusting of snow on their peaks. Oonagh dropped into second gear as she negotiated her car through the wrought-iron gates and drove slowly along the narrow road flanked by gravestones. The older ones were the most impressive. Towering monuments to remember the dead.
She pulled over and switched off her engine. There was barely enough room for another car to pass but she guessed it was quiet enough that that wouldn’t be a problem. She walked over to the third grave on the left. Plot number 1906.
‘Hi, Dad,’ she whispered, and wiped some grass clippings from the top of the small headstone. Her heels sank into the grass, which was soft from the previous evening’s rain. She laid a small daisy chain over the top of the gravestone and was almost glad he wasn’t here to see the mess she was making of her life.
*
Fran was already waiting in the coffee shop; Oonagh knew she’d be early. She stood up when she saw her daughter and reached her arms out and held her tight. ‘Hello, darling angel, how’s my girl?’
‘I’m great, Mum,’ she lied. ‘Bloody hell, you look fantastic.’ This time she meant what she said. Fran looked ten years younger, and Oonagh told her so.
‘I’m ten years happier, darling.’
Oonagh felt a stab of envy. She didn’t begrudge her mum happiness but it would be nice to know the secret. ‘Here.’ She thrust a parcel towards her mum, hurriedly wrapped in tissue.
‘Oonagh, you need to stop buying me things.’ Fran pulled the tissue away to reveal a soft brown leather handbag, the Prada logo glinting discreetly at the top. ‘Oh, no, this is too much.’ Fran clasped the bag to her chest, apparently breathless.
‘Mum, behave yourself, it’s a bloody fake! It was peanuts, honestly.’ Her mum hung the bag on the crook of her elbow like a badge of honour then leaned over to kiss her daughter again. Fran O’Neil was probably the only woman on the planet who carried real-deal designer handbags and boasted to all her friends they were fakes.
‘Still going well with Owen?’ Oonagh changed the subject away from the bag and Fran smiled for the affirmative.
‘What about you?’ she asked, scanning the menu without looking up. Oonagh shook her head, and tried to catch the waiter’s eye, ready to order.
‘Have you thought about a dating agency? They do it online now.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A dating agency.’
‘Mum, I heard, I just couldn’t believe you suggested it.’
‘Moira’s doing it.’
Oonagh had no idea who Moira was and couldn’t be arsed finding out.
‘She’s been out for dinner three times this week. Saved herself a fortune. All she’s had to buy is a tin of corned-beef.’
‘Mum! That’s enough. Bloody hell.’
‘What about Alec?’
‘Alec who?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘Davies?’
Fran nodded.
‘Are you kidding?’
‘No, why not?’
‘Well, no! I mean, there’s nothing wrong with him… he’s nice and…’
‘You could do worse.’
And I have done, Oonagh thought several times a week. But for now, all she could think about was the look of disgust on his face after her one-night stand with the cameraman she thought she’d killed. ‘I’ll just order at the counter.’ She stretched her legs and wriggled out from the table.
‘Don’t rule him out just yet…’ Fran yelled and Oonagh allowed her mother’s voice to be drowned out by the coffee machine. That was one road she’d never go down. She was still mopping up the aftermath from her affair with Jack, if you could even call it an affair.
By the time she’d ordered and come back from the loo the coffee and cakes were on the table. Oonagh could murder a glass of wine, but Fran would go mental if she thought she was drinking during the day.
It was true her mum was looking better than she had done in years. Oonagh felt like a shit for the way she’d carried on when she’d discovered Fran had a boyfriend. But Owen, as it turned out, wasn’t after Fran’s money, didn’t appear to be a serial killer and, judging by his teeth, he seemed to floss twice a day, so what wasn’t to like?
‘I’m glad you’ve found someone, Mum,’ and she was surprised to find she meant it. ‘Tell him I’m asking for him the next time you see him.’
But Fran looked as though she was only half listening; her concentration was on something outside the window. ‘Why not tell him yourself?’ She scraped her chair back and waved towards the door as the brave man himself walked inside and pulled up a chair beside them.
He dropped a kiss effortlessly onto Fran’s cheek. The intimacy of the gesture pinched the back of Oonagh’s throat. She eased back into her chair and watched their obvious affection as they chatted together.
‘Tell Owen about your new project, Oonagh.’ Suddenly Oonagh was six years old again and being made to put on her tap shoes, or her skating dress, or twirl her baton or whatever hobby she was practising at the time. ‘Mum!’
‘Oonagh’s writing a book.’ Fran didn’t even try to disguise the pride in her voice. ‘A novel.’ Oonagh slunk further into her chair, sure that the outside world could bore into her very soul and see the scant progress she’d made with her bestseller.
Owen raised his eyebrows. ‘Very impressive.’ There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm in his voice, which made Oonagh feel worse.
‘Early stages.’ She sipped her coffee and looked at her watch, using it as a prop. ‘Listen, I really need to shoot.’ Small talk no longer came easy to her and she feared Owen would ask her more about the book.
She gulped down her coffee and said her goodbyes, leaving Fran to show off her new bag to Owen. ‘Honestly, I don’t think anyone would ever be able to tell this from an
original…’
On the drive home Oonagh’s thoughts wandered back to work. Where the hell would she find six female killers who would be willing to talk on camera? She pulled off the main road up the one-way system for home. She reckoned two of the programmes could cover historical crimes, which would negate the need to secure fresh material and she could use archive interviews, library footage and ‘experts’. She knew that was cheating slightly, but she needed this series secured pronto. Those episodes could be scheduled towards the end of the series, and with a bit of luck she might be able to find other subjects and not have to use them at all. They couldn’t go right at the end. The first and last episode of any series were always the money shots – the pick of the crop.
The rain was light enough not to smear the windscreen and patches of blue sky struggled through the cloud.
For the first time in a long time Oonagh felt the nostalgic feeling of happiness. It took her by surprise. She slowed down to take a corner, the sun was low in the sky and flickered dazzling light as she passed the railings of the high school. The light pierced the side of her eye and a slight wave of nausea stirred in her stomach. Her mouth suddenly felt dry and parched. Then blackness.
35
Glasgow 2002
A dead weight crushed her chest and she thought she could hear a siren in the distance. An overwhelming scent of burnt toast filled her nostrils and the taste of vomit lingered in her mouth. The wetness between her legs was cold and she prayed to God she hadn’t peed herself. Her right eye was forced open by someone’s hand and a white light shone in her eye. ‘Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?’
Oonagh pushed the hand away and looked down. The airbag had inflated and forced against her chest; the bonnet of her car was pressed neatly into a lamp post. ‘Shit.’ Her voice sounded strange: thick and muggy. She wiped the saliva away from her chin. The paramedic leaned over and slid her seat back, releasing her from the constraints of the airbag.
‘Are you in pain anywhere?’ He touched her neck and down her shoulders with his thumb.
Oonagh looked round. ‘Did someone rear-end me? What happened?’ But there were no other cars nearby. She tried to piece together the events leading up to the obvious crash as she struggled to get out of the car.
‘It would be best if you didn’t move for now until we’ve checked there’s nothing broken.’
Oonagh tried to smile. ‘Believe me, had I broken anything you’d know about it.’
Her legs trembled as the paramedic led her to the back of a waiting ambulance. Her black jeans disguised the damp patch at her crotch. ‘Well, you’ll need to get checked over just in case.’
‘And breathalysed.’ The second voice seemed to come from nowhere. The uniformed officer got into the ambulance and sat opposite her. ‘It’s just routine.’ He held the kit to her lips and Oonagh O’Neil vomited all over his standard issue copper’s shoes.
*
‘Have you ever blacked out before?’ There were more lights in her eyes and she was rigged up to a heart monitor in a small single ward.
‘Why do hospitals always smell like cabbage?’
The doctor glanced at the screen then back to her. He allowed a brief smile. ‘Oonagh, please.’
‘No, never.’
‘Do you drink?’
She fell back onto the pillows, which felt scratchy on her back through the gap in the hospital gown. ‘For God’s sake! The breathalyser proved positive…’ she thought for a moment ‘… or negative… What’s the good one?’
‘Negative.’ He looked at her notes and went through a battery of questions. She wasn’t really listening so answered no to all of them.
‘Any history of epilepsy?’
‘No.’
History of strokes, family history?’
‘That’s it, I’m going.’ She swung her legs out of the bed and staggered slightly as she tried to stand.
The doctor guided her back onto the bed and carried on. ‘Are you on any medication?’
She faltered slightly. ‘The, the em, the contraceptive pill…’ innocent enough ‘… and I’m on…’ She made the tranquillisers sound as benign as possible and elected not to tell him about self-medicating with stuff she’d bought on the Internet.
‘Often these episodes are a one-off occurrence, but we need to run a full CT scan to find out what’s going on.’ He smacked his lips and gave her a cheesy grin. ‘D’you have someone who can drive you home?’
‘I can drive myself home. The breathalyser was negative. Remember?’ She stood up, then suddenly realised her car was wrapped around a lamp post somewhere off Byres Road. But sadly that wasn’t what the doctor was talking about.
‘Oonagh, sit down, please. You won’t be able to drive until we find out what’s wrong with you.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I skipped breakfast and fainted at the wheel.’ Nerves fluttered in her chest and she began to wish she had been drunk. This was scaring her.
He nodded as though he wasn’t really listening. ‘Did you have any tingling in your arms or legs? Tightness in the jaw?’
She sat back down on the bed; her head spun as she pieced together the moments before the crash. ‘No, I don’t think so. In fact…’ she recalled the sun streaming through the car window and feeling good ‘… in fact the opposite. I felt really… good. Happy.’
He nodded again, but this time seemed to take in what she was saying. ‘Any feelings of butterflies in your tummy, unfamiliar smells, tastes?’
She wanted her mum. ‘I thought I could smell… toast?’
‘It could be temporal lobe epilepsy. Patients often describe a feeling of euphoria prior to a seizure. Often accompanied by hallucinations, strange smells, vivid memories. Common in children.’ He was prattling on about Dostoevsky suffering from it, he was on a roll and Oonagh reckoned he’d researched this for his final papers. She zoned out until he delivered the killer blow. ‘Your licence will be suspended until it’s determined you’re fit to drive—’
‘Whoa. Wait a wee minute here,’ but the doctor was in full flow.
‘You seem to have had a complex partial seizure. Now these episodes can and often are solitary in occurrence and we may never know…’ The doctor’s voice faded into the background as Oonagh’s stomach moved and the blackness enveloped her once more.
36
Glasgow 2002
It wasn’t like McVeigh to keep him waiting. Davies looked at his watch again: quarter past. He’d got the voicemail almost an hour ago now, asking to meet him at the office, said it was urgent. He tried calling but no reply. He was losing his cool when his phone rang, number withheld.
‘Davies.’
He didn’t recognise the voice on the other end: ‘Is that DI Alec Davies?’
‘I’ve just said as much, who’s this?’
‘I’m calling from Workplace Wellness. It’s about your colleague DS—’
He didn’t give her a chance to finish. ‘Shit, what’s happened? Is he OK?’ Davies was surprised to feel the slight stirring of nerves in his gut.
‘Well, it’s a bit…’
‘D’you want to just tell me what’s wrong?’
‘We have him here at our chronic illness and stroke rehabilitation unit. He’s had a bit of an… well, let’s call it an episode whilst trying out one of our machines.’
Fuck. ‘Is he OK? What’s the score?’
‘The emergency services are on their way, but he asked me to call you, said you’d be worried.’
‘Right, where is he? I’m on my way.’
‘We’re right across the car park in the ancillary building. The mobile breast screening is parked right outside, you can’t miss us.’
‘Tell him not to worry, I’m on my way.’
‘Don’t worry, he’s perfectly calm. We’re looking after him…’
Davies let the annoying whiney voice trail off as he ignored the lift and took the stairs two at a time. He ran across the car park, there was no sign o
f an ambulance yet, but there were enough trained coppers to deal with most CPR emergencies until the big boys arrived. His own heart thumped through his shirt; the cold air caught the back of his neck, turning the sweat on his back icy cold. He clearly wasn’t as fit as he should be and made a mental note to shift a few pounds. McVeigh was as thin as a whippet and, as far as he could tell, fit as a butcher’s dog. If he could take a stroke, there was little hope for the rest of them.
He pushed the swing doors open and was greeted by a flushed-faced occupational therapist. The badge on her chest said Morag; he couldn’t be arsed reading the rest. ‘Where is he?’ His voice caught the back of his throat, he was more breathless than he should be after that short burst, but the adrenalin had kicked in too and gave him some much-needed energy. Morag took his arm and gently guided him through to a small room. There was no sense of urgency in her manner; he feared the worst.
‘As I said on the phone, Jim’s had a bit of an episode…’
And there he was. The colleague who’d got on his tits every day for more than two years, standing on the state-of-the-art health monitor, dressed only in his T-shirt and boxers, arm encased in the blood-pressure cuff.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Oh, boss, thank God you came over.’
‘The fuck are you doing? I thought you were dead!’
Morag tried to calm troubled waters. ‘It seems Jim was a wee bit enthusiastic about using the machine. He seems to have got himself stuck in the blood-pressure sleeve. It’s electronic, very tight, you know.’ The sleeve, as she called it, was a solid metal tube sticking out from the body of the machine.
‘I wasn’t enthusiastic, I was just taking my blood pressure.’ McVeigh tugged his arm to prove his point, but it wasn’t budging.
Davies felt the colour rise in his cheeks. ‘Could you not have told me that on the phone, you stupid fucking cow?’
Morag stepped back, clearly horrified by his outburst. ‘You put the phone down on me before I had the chance to explain.’ She held her hand across her chest, waiting for an apology. Morag clearly didn’t know Alec Davies, otherwise she’d have known she’d have a long wait.
Keep Her Silent Page 13