A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

Chapter Eight

In the mornings the waiting room of the radiotherapy centre was packed with people squashed two to a chair, leaning against the walls, sometimes sitting on the floor. Now, at midday, it was quieter, only half full and the people seemed unbothered about the wait. The door was propped open to let in the sunshine and some younger patients sat on the narrow strip of grass outside the building, their skirts hitched around their thighs to expose their legs to the sun. The women were planning a trip to Otterbridge fair. The last night was always the best, they said laughing. The rides were more expensive but the atmosphere was great. Behind a tea counter two elderly WRVS helpers stood and chatted lazily. Emily took her appointment card from her handbag and placed it face-down on the receptionist’s desk. A nurse would come eventually to take the cards and patients would be called to the treatment room in order of arrival.

Annie looked around her with undisguised curiosity.

‘Eh, pet,’ she said. ‘ Isn’t it nice in here? Easy chairs and carpet and everything.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘And don’t the folks look normal.’

‘What did you expect?’ Emily snapped, something of her old spirit returning. ‘It isn’t a zoo.’

‘No, well…’ Annie stared at a young man with a bald head and purple paint marks on his neck, who was doing The Times crossword with outstanding speed.

Hunter had gone to park the car and appeared awkwardly at the door. He regarded the women, laughing in the sunshine, with something like fear. Were they mad? What did they have to laugh about? Annie and Emily settled into chairs while he stood and looked across at them.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did Mrs Cassidy give you any idea where she was going?’

Emily shook her head. ‘No, she was rather mysterious. Usually she was very open, you know. She’d tell you anything. But not yesterday.’ She felt no obligation to this young man. Let him find out for himself, she thought.

‘Was she away for a long time?’

‘Not more than half an hour, possibly less. She was here when I came back from treatment.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘Worried. Upset.’

He was daunted by the task ahead of him. ‘It’s a huge hospital,’ he said. ‘ She could have gone anywhere.’

‘Oh, no,’ Emily said. ‘ I don’t think so. You see if she was going to one of the other departments she would have gone outside. This building is quite self-contained. But she didn’t. She went through that door over there.’

She nodded towards the door which led into the rest of the building.

Hunter looked at the old lady curiously. She seemed to find the exchange amusing, as if she were playing some sort of game with him. It must be her age, he decided. Or her illness.

As they stared at the door a radiographer in a white tunic walked through and called out a list of names. Mrs Bowman was the last on the list. She stood up slowly and followed two old men through the door. Hunter went after them.

The building was organised along a series of long corridors with intersections at right angles like an American street plan. The three patients had disappeared. Hunter walked along a spotless corridor past rows of shut doors. There was the faint hum of machinery and suddenly the incongruous sound of uninhibited laughter which only added to his unease.

He was looking for some senior administrator who might publicise Dorothea’s presence in the hospital and ask for witnesses, but he felt unable to knock at one of the closed doors to ask for help. There were frightening symbols indicating radioactivity and implying that all visitors without detailed scientific knowledge should stay away. He wandered on hoping to find a reception area or to meet someone not wearing a white coat. He came at last, with some relief, to a plump woman in a uniform overall who moved a huge polisher from side to side across the linoleum tiles.

‘Excuse me!’ he shouted.

She pushed a button with her foot and the polisher whirred to a stop. He took a photograph of Dorothea Cassidy from his pocket.

‘This woman was a visitor here yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘Did you see her?’

She leaned on the polisher, grateful for an excuse to stop work, and looked carefully at the photograph.

‘No,’ she said regretfully. ‘Sorry. But if she was a visitor she would have gone upstairs. That’s where the wards are.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I thought everyone came here as out-patients.’

‘No, some of them are very poorly and have to stay in.’ She showed him to the lift then reluctantly started the machine and continued her work.

In Hastings Ward it was the calm, quiet time of early afternoon. All the activity of the morning was over and the patients had finished lunch. In the main room eight elderly women dozed on their beds. It was hot and the flowers on the bedside cabinets drooped. Staff Nurse Imogen Buchan sat in the office and hoped that now she would have time to collect her thoughts and banish the panic which had overwhelmed her for two days. She knew she would have to come to a decision quickly. There was danger in this delay, and confusion, and there was not only herself to consider.

But almost as soon as she had sat down behind the desk the student nurse appeared, swinging insolently on the door, demanding her attention.

‘Can you come and talk to Mrs Peters?’ the student said. ‘She’s the one that had the implant yesterday. She’s suddenly decided that she’s claustrophobic and can’t possibly spend four days in that room.’ She touched the side of her head with her forefinger and raised her eyebrows. ‘ Neurotic cow.’

Imogen looked at the student with disapproval but said nothing. She walked along the corridor to the patient’s cubicle. The student had disappeared, probably to the cloakroom for a sneaky cigarette. Mrs Peters’s door was open but the space was blocked by a heavy lead screen, shoulder high, a protection against radioactivity. At one time Imogen would have ignored the screen, gone past it to sit on the bed and take the woman’s hand in an attempt to calm her. But today she stood in the corridor and looked across to the woman who lay moodily on top of the bed. The patient was in her early fifties, well groomed, articulate. She reminded Imogen strikingly of her mother. Her nightdress was open at the neck and Imogen could see the radioactive wire, held in place by brightly coloured beads, which was being used to treat the scar that remained after surgery.

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said, her voice high and hysterical. ‘I would never have agreed to this if I’d known what’s involved. I’m so bored I could scream. It’s like being a prisoner. I never could stand being shut in.’

For a split second there was a glorious possibility that Imogen would lose her temper. She wanted to scream back at the woman and tell her that she was self-centred, egotistical, self-dramatising. But she maintained her precarious self-control. She had lost her temper with Dorothea Cassidy and that had been a disaster.

She spoke to the woman soothingly. She said Mrs Peters had to stay where she was for the safety of the other patients and the staff. Soon it would all be over. The woman relaxed, reassured by the attention.

‘I’ve been so silly,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Imogen said, under her breath, as she returned to the office.

Hunter stepped out of the lift into bright sunshine and felt immediately happier. He was faced by an empty day room and an open door into an office where a staff nurse was writing. All the ill people were decently out of sight. The nurse looked up and gave him an impatient professional smile. She was pretty in a pale, washed-out way. She should use more make-up, he thought. It would make all the difference. He smiled back at her and glanced automatically to the hand on the desk to see if she was wearing a wedding ring. He had always fancied women in uniform.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

Too right, he thought. There’s a lot you could do for me.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I’m Gordon Hunter from Northumbria Police. We’re trying to trace the movements of a woman. She was in this building yesterday and may have come to visit one of the patients on your ward.’

As he approached her he could see that she looked very tired. The skin under her eyes was bruised and strained.

‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked.

‘She was found murdered in Prior’s Park early this morning,’ he said. ‘I expect you’ll have heard about it.’

She shook her head. ‘ No. How terrible! I was on an early shift this morning and I didn’t know.’ There was no emotion in her voice and he supposed that nurses, like policemen, were accustomed to sudden death.

He set the photograph in front of her. It was a recent picture of Dorothea, taken by her husband. She was sitting at her desk, rather serious, as if she had been disturbed while working. Hunter watched the nurse glance down at it. She suddenly turned very pale and he realised that she must be exhausted. It was a bloody shame, he thought, that nurses were so over-worked. How could a man persuade one to go out with him if she was dead on her feet.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t recognise her. But she might have been on the ward yesterday afternoon. I don’t see all the patients’ visitors. We’re very flexible about visiting here. Some of them have to travel long distances. They come and go pretty much as they please.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see.’ He was tempted to ask her if she was busy tonight, if she felt like a Chinese meal and a few drinks, but he could tell there would be little point.

‘Were there any other nurses on the ward yesterday?’ he asked.

‘Of course. But none of them are here now. I swapped my shift.’

‘What about domestics?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, apparently not very interested. ‘You could ask the supervisor.’

‘Doctors?’

‘I think Rosie Stewart, the registrar, was here. But she’d have nothing to do with the visitors.’

It was a wild goose chase, he thought. Just as he’d anticipated.

‘I’ll have to get the photograph circulated,’ he said. ‘ If she was here someone must have seen her. Who should I ask about that?’

She pointed him back down the stairs, pleased, he thought, to be left alone to her work in the sunshine.

When Hunter returned to the waiting room Annie Ramsay and Emily Bowman were there, sitting together against one wall, drinking tea from polystyrene cups. The room was almost empty now and the WRVS ladies were clearing up and counting the money from the till. The nurse behind the desk was reading a romantic magazine. When he came in through the door Annie Ramsay jumped up and waved to him though it would have been impossible for him to miss them.

‘That’s good timing,’ she said brightly. ‘Mrs Bowman’s just come out of her treatment, haven’t you, hinnie? We’ll finish our tea and then we can be off.’ She looked at Hunter with her small and curious eyes. ‘Did you have any luck?’

He grunted non-committally and shuffled his feet to show that he was a busy man and wanted to be away.

‘No,’ Annie Ramsay said, ‘ I didn’t think you would.’ She turned to Emily Bowman and added with malice and enjoyment: ‘Such a pity our Stephen couldn’t come. I say there’s nothing to beat experience.’

She helped Emily to her feet and imperiously sent Hunter to fetch the car.

Upstairs on the ward, Staff Nurse Imogen Buchan left the office, locked herself in the lavatory and was violently sick. She ran the tap to hide the noise she was making, then washed her hands and began to splash water over her face. When she returned to the office the student was there, leaning against the desk. On seeing Imogen she began talking in a bored, complaining way about her boyfriend. He was so jealous, she said. She only had to look at another man and he was furious. You’d think he intended to kill her. Imogen sent her back on to the ward with menu cards and closed the door.

She knew the number of St Mary’s Vicarage, Otterbridge, without having to look it up and dialled with trembling fingers. Outside people were starting to arrive for the afternoon’s visiting and she realised she could be disturbed at any time, yet still she kept the receiver to her ear and prayed that someone would reply.

Please, she pleaded to herself. It can’t be true. Let there be some mistake.

But when she left the hospital at the end of her shift there were pictures of Dorothea Cassidy on every noticeboard. The woman’s eyes seemed to be following her down the corridor, making Imogen feel that even after her death there was no escape from her.