In a corner of the room a small wardrobe held Phyllis’s few clothes. They were all cotton for she never left the heat of this room any more. In earlier days when she could still move her arms and turn her head the nurses would heave her into a wheelchair and push her down the corridor to what they now called the day room. There she had been parked in her old lounge with its egg and dart plaster coving around the ceiling. The other residents had upset her with their staring or feeble attempts at one-sided conversation and she’d always preferred the relative peace and quiet of her own room.
Nowadays there were directives about lifting patients. It took two nurses to sit her upright. And they were always short of staff. So Phyllis was left with the television for company. She rarely permitted the staff to switch it on these days. They always asked first, thank God, and her tiny shake of the head allowed her room to stay silent. Once, long ago, she had watched the quiz shows, but nobody came to switch the thing off and she had tired of the interminable soaps that followed, invading her space. The programmes had been punctuated by advertisements reminding Phyllis of so many things she would never need again.
The yellow light flooded across the linoleum floor as the nurse pushed open the door. It wasn’t Kirsty, her designated nurse, but one of the others whom she rarely saw.
‘Morning, Phyllis. Time for your pills.’ The nurse barely made eye contact with Phyllis, turning her attention instead to the glass of yellow goo and the plastic phial of assorted tablets. Phyllis watched her face as the woman concentrated on tumbling all the pills onto a spoonful of the thickened liquid. The nurse’s eyes never left the outstretched spoon on its journey to Phyllis’s open mouth. She felt the metal spoon then the saliva began to ooze from beneath her tongue. One swallow and it was over.
‘Right, then.’ The nurse flicked the residue from Phyllis’s lips, leaving a smear behind that would feel sticky and uncomfortable until someone else came to wash her face. It was strange, she reflected, that she could still swallow a mouthful of medication like that in one gulp when a few drops of water would have set her choking. This disease had taken its toll on her throat muscles as well as so much of the rest. Speech was impossible now, and she rarely tried to communicate beyond a shake or nod of the head.
With a clack, the blinds were opened and weak daylight fell onto the objects in the room. Now the daily routine began. The first nurse was joined by a small, stout auxiliary with dark hair.
‘Morning, Phyllis,’ she swept a practised eye over the bedclothes, resting for a moment on the patient’s face. Phyllis was heaved into a sitting position to participate in the ritual of blood pressure, temperature and removal of her bodily wastes. She watched, detached, as if it was happening to someone else. She endured the harsh wet flannel on her face and body while the two women carried on an earlier conversation as if she wasn’t there.
‘Did you see her being carried away?’
‘Sh!’ the nurse frowned at her, nodding her head towards Phyllis, belatedly acknowledging her presence.
‘Oh. Right. Och, she’ll never know. Will you, darling?’ she smiled a pasted-on smile in Phyllis’s direction.
Phyllis closed her eyes as the hook pulled up the sling and raised her off the bed. Below her the two women pulled at the sheets, dashing the soiled linen onto the floor then smoothing on the fresh bedding with an expertise born of much practise. At last she was lowered back onto the cool sheet and the perpetually moving mattress. The ritual was completed by the auxiliary spraying the air with the scent of roses.
For a while this would serve to mask the unpleasant smell of human urine. Left alone, Phyllis watched the spray, like mist catching the light as it fell. Her day could now begin. The sky with its ever-shifting shapes was there to see; and imagination, if not memory, would people her hours.
Now she could banish the memory of that nightmare in the dark. She closed her eyes but heard again the cry that had left her shivering. Had she really seen that shadow of malice falling against the cupboards outside her room? And those hands reaching to pluck a flower from her vase? No one would ever know what she had seen.
Chapter Ten
Lorimer stood outside the front entrance to the Grange, watching as Niall Cameron approached, recalling their conversation of the night before. He had found the detective constable leaning against the side of the building, head pressed against his arms. Lorimer had wondered at the sound in the dark until he realised the young man was sobbing quietly.
‘I knew her, sir. She’s a girl from back home,’ Cameron had told him, his face streaked with tears. ‘She’s Kirsty MacLeod. We grew up together. She was in my wee sister’s year at the Nicholson.’
Lorimer had guided him towards the car where he’d heard the rest of the story. How Niall Cameron had left Lewis to join the police force against his family’s wishes. How they’d wanted him to take over his late father’s fishing boat but Niall hadn’t seen a future there anymore. Now there was only his mother at home with the youngest one. All the others had left. Kirsty had come to the city too, but he’d never seen her. Until now.
‘Should I come off the case, sir?’ Cameron had wanted to know. But Lorimer had shaken his head. Some background knowledge would be useful.
Now the DC was closer Lorimer could see his bloodshot eyes, signs of a sleepless night. Well, it happened to them all in this profession. Young Niall Cameron had better get used to it.
‘OK?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Talk to anyone from home yet?’
Cameron nodded. ‘There’s only one next of kin, the old auntie who lives in Harris. Kirsty’s mother died of cancer when the lassie was twelve. Her dad was drowned some time back.’
‘Right. We’ll probably find out more now from the director, Mrs Baillie. She lives on the premises. We only took a preliminary statement last night but there’ll have to be proper interviews this morning. Alistair’s here already, setting up an incident room.’
Some things were better done in daylight, thought Lorimer. There was a team of uniformed officers doing a house-to-house inquiry along the road. It was a residential district with not a close circuit television camera in sight. They’d have to rely on the local insomniacs for any sighting of the killer. Last night had been thoroughly unpleasant. None of the staff had known much about the nurse’s background or else they weren’t letting on. The auxiliary who’d found her, Mrs Duncan, had been in a state of shock and could barely verbalise. Lorimer had been given a full list of all members of staff. It was a long list, given the staffing requirements for a twenty-four hour day to care for a number of vulnerable people. Still, records would be crosschecked on the computer and that might throw something up.
Those patients who’d emerged from their rooms last night had been surprisingly calm. Though perhaps some of them were sedated at night, anyway. They would all be interviewed at greater length this morning. Lorimer hadn’t forgotten all those lights switched on upstairs.
Now, in the spring morning, it was hard to imagine that a murder had taken place in such a pleasant spot. The sky was clear and blue although there was still a chill in the air. Above him a blackbird was whistling unseen in the trees. Lorimer stepped back out onto the front lawn and walked as far as a curve of rhododendron bushes. Turning, he looked back at the house. It had a pleasing aspect from the front. Two enormous bay windows flanked the front entrance. The huge storm doors were fastened back and Lorimer could see shadowy shapes moving beyond the frosted glass. The clinic’s employees were already having to go about the business of caring for their patients, after all. Some of the upstairs windows showed drawn curtains still, though it was past nine o’ clock. Whose sleep had been disturbed during the night, he wondered?