A Song for the Dying

32

The corridor wall was cold against my back, leaching through the damp jacket to the chilled flesh within. ‘No, Mackay. M.A.C.K.A.Y. Jimmy Mackay, last known address: Flat 50 Willcox Towers, Cowskillin.’

Rhona repeated it back to me, slowly, as if she was writing it down at the same time. ‘OK, got that. Don’t worry, by the time we’ve finished with him, Jimmy’s not going within a million miles of his ex.’

‘Thanks, Rhona.’

‘Ash?’ She coughed. ‘Look, I’m really sorry I told Ness you think the Inside Man might be a cop. I didn’t know it was meant to be a secret. Honest.’

‘Well … just make sure Jimmy Mackay gets the fright of his life.’

‘Deal.’

The doorway down the hall opened and Alice backed out, talking too quietly to make out more than a couple of words from where I stood. Then she leaned into the flat and hugged whoever it was.

Alice backed away again and the door closed. She stood there for a moment, then slumped in place, took a couple of deep breaths — arching her back — then turned and gave me a weak smile. Waved.

I limped over. ‘Well?’

She rubbed a hand across her face. ‘Claire Young’s flatmates are entrenched in stage three of the Kübler-Ross model — the whole place is like a mausoleum.’ Alice shook herself. ‘I’m sorry you had to leave, it’s-’

‘It’s OK. I understand. They don’t need some policeman intruding on their grief.’

‘Pfff…’ She stepped in close and leaned her forehead against my chest. ‘We did some NLP and some talk therapy and I feel like I’ve run a marathon carrying a washing machine on my back…’

I gave her shoulder a rub. ‘That us?’

A nod. ‘Can we get something to eat?’

I turned and guided her towards the stairs. ‘The hospital canteen’s rubbish, but there’s usually a chip van parked outside.’

Building A’s stairwell was lined in glass, rather than concrete, with views into the dark boughs of Camburn Woods on one side, and the car park on the other. At least there weren’t any journos lying in wait at the front door.

Alice drooped along at my side as I limped over and opened it. She paused beneath the portico, struggling with her collapsible umbrella. ‘Can we walk? From here to the hospital?’

Outside the wind had dropped. Now it just hammered straight down, bouncing back off the paving slabs and tarmac in a ricochet mist. Battering the trees and bushes into submission.

‘You sure?’

‘For the last two hours we’ve done nothing but drink tea and talk to people in pain, every breath tastes of loss and panic and yes I know that sounds melodramatic, but I’m trying to think like he thinks when he looks at nurses, and now I’m tired and I just want to walk in the rain and not have to wallow in fear and grief.’

‘OK…’

She held her umbrella up, so I could hobble in underneath it. Slipped her arm through mine so it’d be above us both. Stepped out from beneath the portico and into the downpour. ‘A choir of power and pain.’

We followed the path from the front of the building around the back, where it snaked off in three directions — right: back towards the gloomy brick lumps of Buildings B and C, straight ahead: into Camburn Woods, and left: along the fringes of the undergrowth, dead lampposts sticking up like bones towards the granite sky.

A sign stood at the junction, pointing left. ‘CASTLE HILL INFIRMARY ~ ALLOW TWENTY MINUTES’.

Alice pulled in closer as we stepped onto the rain-rivered path, the run-off from the buildings making tiny breakwaters against her red All Stars. ‘No one trusts the on-site security, they never seem to do anything unless you force them. I said they should make some sort of formal complaint, I mean what’s the point of having security if it doesn’t make you feel secure?’

‘Anyone hanging around asking about Claire?’

‘No one specific. Well, there are peepers all the time, especially if you’ve got one of the rooms that backs onto the woods. You know what men are like.’ She sniffed. ‘No offence.’

The nurses’ halls disappeared into the rain behind us. Up ahead, high walls hid the back gardens of a block of sandstone tenements. The spires of St Stephen’s, St Jasper’s, and the cathedral reared above their slate roofs. And just visible in the distance, the twin chimneys of the hospital incinerator, their white trails of smoke and steam making parallel scars across the sky.

The only sounds were the hissing leaves and the drumming raindrops on the umbrella’s black skin.

‘They say anything about someone taking photos? Going through their rubbish?’

She shook her head.

Two hours of visiting flat, after flat, after flat of scared and worried nurses and the only lead we had depended on Detective Sergeant Sabir Akhtar being the technical genius he always told everyone he was.

Alice peered past me, into the woods. ‘It’s like something out of the Brothers Grimm.’

‘Funny you should say that. Once upon a time, there was a young woman called Deborah Hill, and she-’

‘Please.’ Alice turned her head away. ‘Not this time. Let’s just … walk.’

The nurse sniffed, then scrubbed a crumpled tissue across her nostrils, squidging her pudgy nose from side to side. ‘No. Well, you know…’ A shrug and a sigh. She was short, with thick purple bags lurking under her eyes, her face round in the shadow of her Puffa jacket’s hood. The zip was open, despite the rain, showing an expanse of blue scrubs and a name badge with ‘BETHANY GILLESPIE’ printed on it.

Jessica’s flatmate. The one with the stalker ex-husband.

She popped another chip in her mouth, chewed, then leaned in closer and dropped her voice. ‘You always get nutters, don’t you? I don’t mean people with learning difficulties or mental health issues, I mean the kind of nutters who want to sniff your fingers when you come out of the Ladies. Once had a bloke in here who’d scream about abdominal pain, then soon as you got the bed sheets pulled back he’d pee on you.’ Another sniff. ‘You know: nutters.’

The queue for chips had dwindled to just one more nurse and then it was Alice’s turn, the four of us sheltering beneath the van’s awning. The air heady with the scents of fried batter, hot potatoes, and vinegar.

Most of the hospital was hidden from this corner of the car park, blocked out by the tomb of Victorian sandstone where they kept people like Marie Jordan. Drugged up to the ears and locked in a room with bars on the windows. The tower rose behind it, but only the top two floors were visible, lights glinting in the windows — grey and thin below, warm and gold on the penthouse level. Where the private patients went.

Bethany broke off a chunk of fish and crunched through the batter.

I nodded towards the hospital. ‘What about patients, anyone make any complaints?’

She swallowed. ‘About Jessica? God, no. She was completely brilliant with the mums and the dads. A total professional in every respect.’

There was a rustle of paper and the other nurse wandered over, face lined and creased as she stuffed in a couple of chips. Thin, with whippet-grey hair pulled back from her face. A small, puckered mouth full of sharp little teeth — chewing with her mouth open. She eyed me up and down, then turned to Bethany. ‘Who’s your boyfriend?’

Bethany grimaced for a moment, then replaced it with a smile. ‘I was just telling this nice policeman how professional Jessica is.’

‘Jessica? Professional?’ A snort. She bit the end off a battered sausage, chewing and talking at the same time. ‘You remember Mrs Gisbourne?’

‘Jean MacGruther, that is no way to talk of-’

‘That’s dead people. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Jessica’s not dead.’ Nurse MacGruther turned to me. ‘Is she?’

I opened my mouth, but Bethany got there first. ‘You saw what they said in the paper this morning, it’s-’

‘Rubbish. Police are trying to do their job. You think that’s any easier if we all stand about like mealie puddings, telling them everybody loved her?’ Another wodge of chips disappeared. ‘Have you spoken to Jessica’s boyfriend yet?’

‘Any reason I should?’

Bethany brought her chin up. ‘That was all a misunderstanding.’

‘Darren Wilkinson.’ Nurse MacGruther’s eyes glittered as she chewed. ‘First shift after Valentine’s Day, Jessica turns up with a shiner the size of a dinner plate. Proper beetroot and jaundice job. Course, they couldn’t let her deal with expectant mothers looking like that, could they? Had to spend the week doing filing and national statistics and things.’

A big theatrical sigh. ‘She explained that. They were playing tennis on Darren’s Wii, and they were a bit drunk, and it was a complete accident.’

‘And the cracked ribs? Were they an accident too?’

‘You know she-’

‘How about the time he knocked out one of her teeth? A molar, right at the back. That takes some doing — lucky he didn’t break her jaw.’

Bethany crunched through another bit of fish. ‘She was abducted by the Inside Man, not her boyfriend. He isn’t a serial killer, he works in Human Resources!’

‘Any bloke that beats up his girlfriend-’

‘She didn’t want to make a fuss, it-’

‘-ginger bastard. How can that-’

‘All right!’ I held my hands up and turned on the police-issue inspector’s voice that had terrified the two idiots in the patrol car yesterday. ‘I get it. He was assaulting her. She didn’t report it.’

They both backed away. Eyed me.

Bethany sniffed. ‘There’s no need to be like that, we’re only trying to help.’

Alice leaned back against the two-tone wall — institution green on the bottom half, scuffed magnolia above. ‘I shouldn’t have eaten all of those chips.’ She puffed out a breath, let her shoulders droop. ‘An hour of talking to midwives, with rampant indigestion… Well, not the midwives, I mean I was the one with indigestion, though I suppose they might have had as well, only no one mentioned it. How about you?’

Shouts and swearing echoed down the corridor, punctuated with the occasional scream. The miracle of birth.

‘I wasn’t there when Rebecca was born. A wee boy got savaged by a drug dealer’s dog, I spent the whole day tracking the bastard down. But I made Katie’s. She was … tiny. And all purple and screaming and covered in snot and blood.’ A small laugh tried to break free, but died before it could breathe on its own. ‘God, it was like an X-rated version of Alien.’ Back when anything was possible and nobody had to die.

A little rip appeared in the middle of my chest, making every breath sting. I cleared my throat. ‘So, did your hour of indigestion get you anything?’

‘Everyone I talked to is scared of the Inside Man. They don’t walk back to the halls unless there’s three or four of them. They don’t use the car park here any more, because there’s still no CCTV.’ She wrapped an arm around herself. ‘He’s turning into a mythological monster — a sort of cross between Freddy Krueger, Jimmy Savile, and Peter Mandelson…’ She checked her watch. ‘Are we going to speak to Jessica McFee’s boyfriend, because maybe we should, I mean if he’s been beating her up then he’s obviously got anger-management and-’

‘What time is it?’

She checked again. ‘Twenty to four.’

‘OK, we finish up with Jessica’s colleagues, then give the boyfriend a grilling. But I want to be out of here by quarter past at the latest, so we’re not late for our mob accountant friend.’

Alice’s head dropped, till she was staring at the tips of her little red shoes. ‘Can we not call him our “friend”, it’s-’

‘We’ve been over this. Him or Shifty, remember?’ I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I know it’s hard, but- Crap.’ My phone trilled in my pocket. Still, it was about time Sabir got back to me with that ID. I hauled my mobile out and hit the button. ‘What kept you?’

‘That you, Henderson?’ Whoever it was, it wasn’t Sabir. Instead of the treacle-thick Liverpudlian accent, they had an Oldcastle burr.

I pulled the phone from my ear and checked the screen: ‘NUMBER WITHHELD’.

‘Who is this?’

‘Some detective: it’s Micky Slosser. You were in my office this morning, remember?’ A pause. Some rustling. Then he was back. ‘Something’s just come in that you might find interesting.’

Silence.

‘Really not in the mood to play, Micky.’

‘One letter. Yellow legal paper. Signed, “the Inside Man”.’