Restlessly, she rose and wandered over to the fridge, then moved away from it and went to look out of the window, watching for his familiar figure tramping homewards on the pavement below. Rain had fallen on the cobbles, making them glisten in the orange lamplight and shine in the headlights of each passing car. She let her nose rest against the cold glass pane, seeing her breath mist it up. Still unable to settle, she returned for no good reason to her seat at the kitchen table. A pile of old newspapers at one end of it caught her eye, and, for the first time, she noticed a sheet of A4 paper resting on top of them. It was a note from Ian.
‘Darling Alice,
Have caught the train to London. The owner of a Gallery saw my website and is very interested in my work. Am taking five of the wishbone lithographs with me for him to see in the flesh. Back late on Saturday.
Love
Ian.’
After she had read it she covered her face with her hands, her heart sinking, more anxious and even more unsettled. Why had he not phoned her to tell her about the trip in person? What was, could possibly be, so urgent that he had to leave her without saying anything. He hadn’t even said where he was staying. And, over a month ago, he had come home annoyed that he had cleaned the stone for the wishbone lithographs, had discovered that he had none left and now could produce no more. He was such a bad liar, and she forgot so little.
Her first reaction was to call him on his mobile, but he might lie again, and what would she say then? She did not want to listen to his disembodied voice making things up, conjuring some paper-thin untruths from the air while sweating at the other end of the line. No. This had to be done face to face. She had to look into his eyes, see him again, if the ‘him’ whom she had believed she knew and loved still existed.
Thinking about what she had lost, tears came to her eyes and rolled unchecked down her cheeks until she could taste the salt on her lips. She had to be a detective at work, but not, surely, at bloody home, too.
Her phone went and her DCI’s name and number came up, but this time she let it ring. Getting no reply, her caller did not bother to wait for the messaging service. Instead, Elaine Bell took another sip of her claret, placed her knife and fork neatly on her plate and looked round, hoping to attract a waiter’s attention and get her bill. But all of them were busy attending to the other diners, one scurrying into the kitchens, empty plates balanced on both forearms.
Her eye was caught by the sight of a large, red-faced man who had his arm around a woman. She was giggling loudly, and he, playfully, put his hand over her mouth, allowing his fingers to caress her full lips. The DCI, now even more painfully self-conscious than usual about her lone and unloved status, rose and went to pay at the till, eager to get back to her office. The Super, she thought, ruefully looking at him, might already have retired on the job and have plenty of time for play, but she had not.
Friday
At 9.30 that morning, the manageress of Abbey Park Lodge was deep in thought, trying to work out what to do next about the latest staff spat. One of her nursing auxiliaries, Agnes Cauld, a large West Indian lady with a fiery temper and a foul mouth, had just stormed out of her office. Her parting shot had been ‘… and don’t think I’ll not be taking this no further, because I bloody well will!’
So all the tea and sympathy she had lavished on the woman had failed to pacify her. And the Irish woman, another auxiliary who had visited her earlier, had been no more amenable to her blandishments, muttering darkly about racism and sizeism in the workplace and uttering the dreaded words, ‘Grievance’ and ‘Legal Advice’.
Perhaps, she wondered, the time had come to involve Julia from HR? No, all that would happen then was that she would be subjected to an earful of jargon about grievance procedures, appeal procedures, protocols and the like, and neither of them, Julia included, would have the faintest idea how to implement any of them. In fact, it was sheer gobbledygook, no more than a lot of meaningless incantations or spells. If only she had stayed within the NHS, then she could have availed herself of a proper, grown-up legal department instead of this tin-pot operation. Now, before you could say ‘Hobnob’, she would find herself on a witness list for an industrial tribunal!
She took a sip of her hot water, delicately removing a stray lemon pip from her mouth, consciously trying to rehydrate herself and enter a calm place. A beach, maybe, with turquoise waters and palm fronds overhanging the lazy surf… No! No, no. First she must sort out this business. The nature of the complaint must be recorded, that was surely the first step, and fortunately the accounts given by the two troublemakers had not really differed. It must all be written down now, while her recollection remained fresh. She held her pen ready.
Agnes had been moving an elderly patient from her bed to a nearby chair, assisted by her Irish colleague, Detta O’Hare. Allegedly, at some stage in the manoeuvre Detta had lost her grip, and Agnes had ended up bearing the patient’s whole twelve-stone weight. Consequently, Agnes had screamed, ‘Detta, you fuckin’ leprechaun, get a hold of her again!’
Detta, apparently deeply insulted, had simply crossed her arms and said ‘How now…’ seeing no need to complete her sentence.
Really, she thought to herself, putting down her Parker, the residents might have some excuse for occasional name-calling – dementia, loss of inhibition and so on – but what excuse was there for the staff? None whatsoever, the besoms! Oh, the complexity of it all, and still they had not managed to identify the prankster in the laundry responsible for putting raisins, which looked uncannily like rat droppings, in the freshly ironed underwear.
Her head now in a spin, the manageress was glad to hear the knock on the door and her own confident voice say, ‘Come in.’
Seeing the well-coiffured individual behind the desk, her gold-plated Parker lying centrally on a spotless pad of paper, Alice Rice was quite unaware of the inner turmoil in the manageress’s breast. However disturbed the woman was by events in her professional life she managed to convey an aura of perfect calm and tranquillity, the epitome of grace under pressure. Only her torn and bleeding fingernails would have alerted the shrewd observer to the difference between her inner and outer states.
In her reassuring mellow contralto, a voice that had clinched many a job interview for her, she explained to the policewoman that she had heard that Una was helping Dr Coates at this moment in time. As she, herself, was on her way to the Bluebell wing, she could take her there if that would be helpful?
As they passed through one of the many hallways, frenzied screaming broke the stale air of the place, and instantly attendants appeared from all directions, homing in on one room. After a strange thumping sound was heard emanating from it, the cries slowly died away like ripples on a pond, and the unnatural calm returned.
‘Old Mr Morris… we should have a vacancy there soon,’ the manageress said with a knowing look, gliding onwards through the next set of double doors. As she followed her, Alice suddenly felt that breathing the lifeless air of the place was dangerous, as deadly to its inmates as to a butterfly gasping in a killing jar. No one was safe in it. Her neighbour, Miss Spinnell, must never end up in a place like this, nor her feisty twin. It was no more than a waiting room for death, a place to store the elderly and infirm like unwanted luggage until the grim reaper finally turned his attention to them, or to what was left of them. And so the problem of the old would be solved.
‘Ah, Mr Braid,’ the manageress said, stopping in her stately progress to talk to a small overall-clad man who was pinning up a notice on a board.
‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to take this lady,’ she gestured to Alice, ‘to room 143. I’ve just remembered that I promised I’d look in on Sandra.’