‘Didn’t put your man down as the squeamish sort,’ she commented. Lorimer frowned. She was right, but this was not the time to inquire about Niall Cameron’s delicate disposition.
‘OK. Cause of death?’
‘Manual strangulation,’ Rosie replied, tracing the curve of neck directly below the nurse’s chin. ‘He came at her from in front, grabbed her with both hands, then did it.’ She looked across at Lorimer, eyebrows raised. ‘I think you’ll find the compression was strong and swift. She died pretty quickly.’
‘But you’ll know more in the morning,’ Lorimer added.
Rosie gave him a weak grin. ‘Yeah.’ She cradled the girl’s head in both hands, shifting it gently to one side.‘Hope you will, too.’
‘Don’t bank on it. He hasn’t even left a scarf this time.’
Lorimer looked towards the girl’s fingers, flattened in a gesture of prayer. The red carnation pointed downwards towards her thighs. ‘Just his calling card.’
He stood up, still staring at the young nurse. Kirsty MacLeod. Now who would break into this place and kill a nurse? Only a madman, a voice answered him. Lorimer gritted his teeth. He stepped away from the body and sidled around the area being dusted down before heading for the stairs to the clinic.
‘May I?’ he asked the nearest boiler-suited officer.
‘Just keep right against the wall, sir, would you?’
Lorimer made his way gingerly up the steps. There could be all sorts of traces here where she’d been dragged down. There was a handrail to one side. This one was painted with black Hammerite, unlike the one rusting outside. He hoped to hell there would be some fingerprints on it. The metal door at the top had been tied open with the orange binder twine that Boyd always used. Lorimer kept to the edge of the steps as he turned into the ground floor corridor. The floor was covered in grey-green vinyl, another good source for forensics to examine.
Was this where she’d been killed? The lights had been put out deliberately so it looked as though the killer had meant to waylay Kirsty MacLeod in this very corridor. Lorimer frowned; another suggestion that this was a crime committed by someone in the clinic. His eyes lit up. Could there be a patient here who’d been in Queen Street station three months ago? First thing in the morning he’d be back asking lots of questions. That was for sure.
There were swing-doors at the end of the corridor, hooked back against the walls on either side, and Lorimer could see that the main part of the building lay beyond this area. Large cupboard doors lined one side of the corridor walls. Lorimer opened them, only to discover shelves and shelves of hospital linen.
There were two doors opposite and Lorimer saw that one was ajar. He left it for the time being and tried the other. It was locked. Frowning, he pushed the other door, hearing it creak. Then he stood in the doorway.
Here was a patient and a very ill one at that. There were tubes protruding from the body and a machine that seemed to be pumping her mattress up and down. Was this where they nursed the terminally ill patients, perhaps? Lorimer had never seen anything like it. He was about to tiptoe away when a tiny movement caught his eye. The patient’s head had moved the slightest bit and Lorimer found himself staring into a pair of bright eyes that were very much alive.
Phyllis had heard it all. The clang of a door in the distance, then nothing until the swing-doors had been swept open and that awful screaming had rent the air. During all the commotion, unseen hands had quietly closed Phyllis’s door. The sounds were muffled after that but she’d been aware of voices and had heard enough to let her know something of what had taken place. Did they imagine she wouldn’t hear them behind her closed door? They were wrong. This disease had robbed her of much, but her sense of hearing was heightened as never before. She knew when the police had arrived. She also knew that some unspeakable horror had taken place not far from her own room.
As she lay listening intently, she recalled the terror of that footfall. Her eyes had shut against the shadow entering her room. She didn’t want to think about it any more. But now she found herself staring into a different pair of pale eyes. Were they blue? She couldn’t make them out in this light. The man was staring back at her.
He was taller than average, built like a sportsman. Even though he stood quite still, Phyllis sensed a restless energy about him. His hair was dark against the outline of light from the corridor. She could see that much. He was the sort of man she’d once desired, she suddenly realised. Strong. Not the type to be indoors for long; always on the move. She’d always liked that in a man.
‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he said at last.
Phyllis liked the voice. It was a recognisable Glasgow accent but he spoke clearly and didn’t mumble. How she wished she could reply. Carry on a conversation. A peculiar moan broke from her lips and she tried to move her head again. There was nothing she could do except widen her eyes to communicate her fear, her desperation. He looked at her harder and for a moment Phyllis thought he was going to step towards the bed. Just when she thought he was coming towards her, he seemed to change his mind and stepped back into the shadows once more.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, but whether he meant he was sorry to disturb her in the middle of the night or that he was sorry for her, Phyllis couldn’t tell. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.
Chapter Nine
Phyllis woke early every day. The night nurses always came to the laundry cupboard outside her room, pulling out the sheets, clattering the stiff doors and gossiping in their loud voices. Bored and wanting their shift to end so they could go home, they didn’t give a thought to who might hear their raucous laughter. They always reminded Phyllis of the magpies outside her window, loud and rude. The cupboard door was banged shut at last and the voices disappeared down the corridor. Her door was deliberately left ajar and the wedge of light from the corridor shone dingy yellow through the gap. The venetian blinds shut out the daylight until other hands came to pull on the cord. Until then, Phyllis had to content herself with this half of her world. She thought of it as Inside now. Never as home any more. Inside was normally boring and predictable.
Her room lay swathed in darkness, only the corridor light picking out familiar shapes. The high bed dominated the room with its special mattress that moved in constant undulations to prevent bedsores. A hissing sigh from the pump mechanism below the bed repeated itself over and over, a sleepy rhythmic sound that Phyllis didn’t notice any more. On her left was a chrome stand holding a plastic bottle that dripped fluids into her unresisting body.
The tubes disappeared below the white sheets. Other tubes led outwards and away, discreetly hidden by the folds of bedding. To the right of the bed a grey plastic chair gathered dust. It was for any visitors who might come at the appointed times. Phyllis no longer expected visitors from the outside world. Only the nursing staff attended her needs with monotonous regularity.
The window was on Phyllis’s right. In the daytime she could see her lawns and flowerbeds, some shrubbery and the sky. Birds came pecking around the borders, friendly chaffinches or the robber magpies. Sometimes a robin trilled its distinctive note, and Phyllis tried to remember what cold, frosty days were like. The birds were highly satisfactory, but she liked the sky best of all. For hours she watched the cloud shapes slither and change; her imagination creating Gods and chariots, characters from mythology, maenads with streaming hair. She rarely saw the stars except in winter when Venus rose in late afternoon on a velvety blue sky. Then hands pulled the blind cord, shutting off her Outside with a sharp metallic snap. For now the sky was dark and shuttered from her sight.