‘No problem,’ he replied. As Alice fell into step beside him, he cupped her elbow as if she was another infirm resident, introducing himself in a sing-song voice as he did so. Resisting the impulse to shake him off, she walked beside him until, thankfully, they reached their destination and he went back to his notice-board. A black and white picture of a laughing woman, on her knees and surrounded by Border terriers, was pinned to the open door.
Inside a gaunt female figure was propped up, stiff and motionless as a log, her dead weight supported by the sides of a high-backed armchair. Her skin seemed shiny and unnaturally taut, and her head was tilted towards the window, which gave an unimpeded view of a tiny courtyard walled in brick, its pitted tarmac covered with recycling bins. Beside her, raising a spoonful of soup to her closed lips, sat Una Reid, coaxing her patient in her gravelly, twenty-a-day voice to ‘take a wee sip, just a wee sip for Una’.
As the policewoman came in, the patient’s eyes never so much as flickered. Though fixed on the drab outlook, they did not appear to be taking anything in. As if unaware of the presence of the spoon, never mind of anyone else in the room, she raised her hand and, uninhibitedly, felt along the edge of her tongue with her fingers. Then she let her arm drop back to her side, slamming into the spoon on the way down and spilling soup all over herself. Una wiped the woman’s bosom with a paper hankie, cleaning the broth from it, but the patient showed no sign of being aware that she was being cleaned or even that she was being touched. Suddenly her arm went up again and she fingered the sides of her tongue once more. Then, like a wounded animal, she let out a pathetic moan and slowly closed her unseeing eyes as if she was dying.
‘Mebbe she’ll sleep now,’ Una said, returning the spoon to the bowl and looking fondly at her.
‘Has she had enough?’ Alice asked, noting that the broth appeared virtually untouched.
‘No. But I’ll not get any more into her. She’s got Huntington’s, ken. Doesn’t know anyone or anything any more, not even that she needs to eat. I’m fighting a losing battle wi’ her,’ Una answered, sounding upset and surreptitiously wiping the corner of her eye with her finger.
‘You knew her – she’s a friend of yours?’ Alice asked gently.
‘Oh, aye. I worked wi’ her for years.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Here, in this place,’ she replied, as if it was obvious. ‘Doctor Coates was one of the resident doctors here when I first came and…’ she stopped momentarily to wipe away another tear, ‘and it was a very different place when she was in charge, I can tell you that.’
‘Was Mr Brodie in this sort of condition, unable to do anything for himself?’
‘No. He could dae a wee bit, lift a spoon and the like. He wis no’ as far gone as what she is.’
‘Could he take his own medicine, straight from the bottle, say?’
‘No’ really,’ she replied, putting the bowl on the trolley, where it joined an uneaten slice of buttered bread and an untouched glass of water.
‘Why not?’
‘He’d take anythin’, like, if you gave it him, but he didnae know anythin’ any more. So, he wouldnae have known whit wis in the bottle. Could have been juice, water, wine. He’d no’ ken that it wis his medicine, like.’
A moan interrupted their conversation and they both shifted their attention back to the doctor. Her eyes were now wide open, staring straight ahead, a look of utter dread contorting her features as if a vision of hell was unfolding before her. She whimpered, turned her face into the chair and groaned once more. Instantly, Una sprang up and put an arm around her, murmuring, ‘It’s all right, Doctor, dinnae you worry, darlin’. You’ll be all right, I’m here beside you.’ Slowly the fear receded from the bloodshot eyes, and, for a second, intelligence shone in them as they rested briefly on the nurse. Then, like a comforted child, the doctor allowed her heavy head to flop onto Una’s shoulder and rest there.
A few seconds later, the nurse’s phone went and, using her free hand, she got it from her pocket, nodded several times in response to the voice at the other end, and then began, ever so slowly, to slide her body free of its burden, tenderly resting the patient’s head against the side of the chair. The call ended with her saying, ‘OK, OK. I’ll tidy up the place before I go. Make sure it’s neat and tidy for everybody.’
‘A visitor?’ Alice asked.
‘No,’ Una replied, picking up the tray and moving towards the door, ‘she doesnae get any visitors nowadays. She’s got a daughter, like, but she cannae face comin’ any more. See, she’s got a fifty-fifty chance of developin’ the disease herself, and she cannae bear tae look at her own future. The Doctor doesnae recognise her anyway, an’ twice she’s scratched her face wi’ her nails, bit her oan the nose once. She can be a wee bit violent sometimes, but she’s aye quiet as a lamb wi’ me.’
‘Can I ask you about Mrs Brodie?’ Alice asked, following Una out of the room.
‘Aha.’
‘How did she cope with her husband’s illness? How did she manage?’
‘She jist got oan wi’ it. She hud tae. She couldnae dae much else, noo could she?’
‘Did she have any support, anyone to help her? The children?’
‘They’d both gone, left home, like. The boy’s at college and so’s the girl, an’she’s got her own wee wan noo.’
‘Was there anyone else to support her? Did she… was she seeing anybody else?’
‘How d’you mean? You mean the Doctor or somethin’?’
‘No. I meant socially.’
‘Aye. Me an’ a’. She wis seeing him “socially” as you cry it. Havin’ it away wi’ him as I’d say… her “toy boy”.’
How d’you know?’
‘I’ve eyes in ma heid like everybody else. and I wisnae born yesterday neither. Onyway, he was aye sendin’ her flooers, big bunches o’ red roses usually. I seen the cairds. You couldnae miss it – she and him, Dr Paxton, were eyeing each other up. I’d bet ma life oan it. If I had wan.’
‘That settles it. We’ll just go and see her again, that Brodie creature,’ Eric Manson said, switching off his computer and not bothering to hide his dislike of the woman. ‘Let her know that we know that she’s a sodding liar. That she’s been two-timing her sick husband with the poor bugger’s own doctor, and that he’s a lot younger than her too.’
‘Fine, Sir. Of course. But if we do do that, she’ll know we’re onto her, won’t she? And, apart from her lying to us, we don’t have much on her yet, do we? We don’t even know that she was with him, and if he is involved, in some way, then there’s a question-mark over all the information we’ve got from him – the drugs stuff, his opinion about Brodie’s condition and the rest. And maybe he wasn’t with her – for all we know he may have an alibi for the Saturday night. Having an affair in itself is not a crime, after all.’
‘No? Right. What we’ll do is speak to him, eh? See where he says he was, get a DNA sample from him, make like it’s routine. If they’re both lying, then chances are…’
He stopped mid-sentence as Elaine Bell came over to his desk. She looked grey with exhaustion, her clothes rumpled from another night spent in the office.
‘So, what did the Reid woman have to say?’ she asked Alice.
‘Heather Brodie’s lover seems to be her husband’s doctor, Colin Paxton.’
‘His doctor! Bloody Hell! Are you quite sure? Were they together on the Saturday? He’d know all about drugs, quantities and so on, and he’d be able to get prescriptions if he wanted. This puts everything in a very different light. We’ll need to go over the India Street house again – thank God it’s still ours. But we’ll have to scour it for completely different things this time. You can do that, Alice. Look over all of Heather Brodie’s stuff this time. Anything that ties her and lover boy together would be useful, letters, cards, whatever. I’ll get permission to have their phones checked. Eric…’