Alice breathed out deeply. At last here was something that connected all four victims, even if the precise significance of the connection was not yet clear. The advocates who had successfully defended the case for the Trust were dead, and it was their efforts which had ensured that the Trust did not require to pay Ms Mair a penny in compensation. One of the doctors blamed for the catastrophe was also dead and the child’s father, who appeared to have sloughed off his responsibilities, had been killed too. She went over to her scanner and patiently fed sheet after sheet into it until she could e-mail the entire judgement to Alastair, adding a note to say that she would call at his house in about an hour’s time to talk about it.
14
One foot emerged through the froth of bubbles, quickly followed by the other. Somewhere under all the foam the soap was hiding and Alice searched, lazily, in the warm water for it, tracking down the soft bar to an area close to her left thigh. On the radio some man from Northern Ireland was berating an inoffensive woman for her ‘unthinking’ enjoyment of a film which, he claimed, denigrated the female sex as a whole and the role of the housewife in particular. With a feeling of omnipotence Alice switched him off, preferring, instead, the regular rhythm of the drip from the leaking cold tap. After a further quarter of an hour’s soaking she rose slowly out of the bath and began to dry herself, her mind preoccupied with the thought that they had entered the ring for the last round and the final bell was not too far off.
Most of the cooker hood was now a bright, post-box red and Alastair climbed down the ladder to admire his handiwork, paintbrush and paint pot in hand. Stepping a few paces backwards towards the fridge to get a better view, he thought how much better the red looked than the dull grey which covered the rest of the kitchen. The sound of the door opening alerted him to his wife’s approach. Ellen came and stood beside him, looked at the wall and then at him enquiringly.
‘Do you like it?’ he asked, knowing in advance the likely reply.
‘What do you think?’ she fenced, unsmiling.
He scratched his head. ‘No?’
Before Ellen had a chance to answer, Alice entered the room. She sensed immediately the discord between the married couple and the reason for it was staring her in the face. Alastair smiled weakly at her.
‘Well, Alice, a great improvement wouldn’t you say?’ but she was too canny to be drawn into their dispute, answering non-committally that both the dove grey and the pillar-box red had their charms, equal and opposite. She knew who would win in the tussle anyway; Ellen always emerged triumphant; their marital history was a chronicle of her victories. As Alastair hammered down the lid of the paint can, Ellen calmly made a pot of tea and exited the room carrying her copy of The Times.
‘You read the judgement?’ Alice asked, as her friend cleaned the paint off his hands.
‘Yes, all of it. I think we’d better go and see DCI Bell. She’s still in her office. I phoned earlier and Ruth said she’s taken to practically living in her room.’
‘Okay, but tell me what you think first?’
‘I don’t know exactly what to think. The killings must be connected in some way to this case, but how exactly is still a bit of a mystery. I suppose that the mother, Davie’s mother, might have had a grudge against the lawyers. They represented the hospital and won the case for it. Also she blamed Dr Clarke for the state of her son. All we know about Sammy McBryde is that he left her in the lurch, to cope on her own. Maybe she’s the killer… I don’t know… perhaps her brother? And what about Dr Ferguson and the judge? You’d think they’d be on her list…’
As they were talking Ellen re-entered the kitchen. She was frowning and pointing to the baby monitor on top of one of the kitchen units. She demanded, ‘Is that on?’
Getting no answer from her husband, she picked it up and examined the controls on the side. ‘Yes, it’s on. On bloody mute mode,’ she answered herself. ‘So even though Gavin’s been crying his eyes out you’ll have heard nothing. You put him to bed again without a nappy and he’s soaking, he must have been crying for ages…’
No lights were visible through the gaps around DCI Bell’s office door; the room appeared to be in total darkness, unoccupied. Tentative knocking elicited a resigned ‘Come in,’ and as they pushed open the door a lamp was switched on. DCI Bell was in the process of raising herself from the desk on which she had been slumped. As she did so, her substitute blanket, a jacket, slid off her and onto the floor. She had a red line running down one side of her face, a deep crease made by her makeshift pillow of a scarf. The remains of her supper-sandwiches and a yoghurt-lay in a cardboard box on her desk beside an empty bottle of cranberry juice. Three files were piled up next to her, the contents of the top one spewed all over the floor.
‘I should have gone home,’ she said wearily.
‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Alice replied, handing over, as she spoke, a copy of the Mair Judgement and beginning to provide a hurried précis. Unable to read and listen simultaneously, Elaine Bell pushed it impatiently to one side, giving Alice her full attention, stopping her only if she went too quickly or to get clarification. At the end of the summary she told them both to sit down, and they listened as she phoned DI Manson to arrange protection for Lord Campbell-Smyth and Dr Ferguson. Having done this, she smiled broadly at her two Detective Sergeants.
‘Tomorrow, the pair of you will go and see Ms Mair. Have you got an address for her yet?’
‘6D Bright Park, Sighthill,’ Alice replied. ‘It’s in the judgement.’
Sleep was not elusive, it came quickly, overpowered her within minutes of her head touching the pillow. But with it did not come peace; quite the reverse, a nightmare. She was the crucial witness in a murder trial, and the killer’s conviction would depend upon the impression she conveyed to the jury. They must perceive her as trustworthy, reliable, thoroughly competent. Entering the courtroom, preceded by the Court Officer, she walked in a dignified fashion towards the witness box, sensing a chill in the room. As she was about to step up into the box she became aware that she was wearing neither skirt nor shoes, although her pants and tights were on, thank God. She glanced at the jurors, a group of irate baboons, chattering and baring their teeth at each other, apparently oblivious to her presence, and turned round and retraced her steps to the door.