Alice peered at the beds through the windows of the locked double doors, but was unable to make out Nicholas Lyon’s figure. Her view was obscured by two closed sets of curtains in the middle of the room. Like oversized shrouds, she thought. And suddenly, the sight of the whole set-up filled her with such despondency, such a feeling of leaden hopelessness that she weakened, and began searching for an Exit sign. As she was wandering down the corridor she noticed a single room opposite the ‘Care of the Elderly’ ward and decided to investigate it. If he was not there, then she would go, she had done her bit, done her best. Peering round the door gingerly, she recognised the old man in a solitary bed, accompanied only by a single monitor, and came to stand beside him. Little evidence of the injuries he had sustained was visible. One side of his face was livid with bruising, his temples sunken. And his complexion had become colourless, near translucent, as if he had been sculpted in pale marble. The only sign of life in the room was the flashing of a little red light monitoring the flow in a tube running between the patient’s hand and a drip pack. Briefly, she watched it pulse, mesmerised.
‘Who are you? Are you family? Only family are allowed now.’ A nurse had entered and looked disconcerted to find her charge with company.
‘Yes, Mr Lyon’s daughter.’
On impulse it had emerged; a clear, conscious and defiant lie. But without her he would be alone, and she sensed that he was near journey’s end. The nurse left the room discreetly and Alice remained, on tenterhooks in case of her return, unwilling to leave him on his own whatever the proprieties might be. A few minutes later, Nicholas Lyon let out a deep sigh, as if of relief, and it was immediately followed by the mechanical scream of the monitor, signalling that his heart had ceased to beat.
10
The call to his flat had remained unanswered, but he had told her that she was free to come to his studio any time of the day or night. A visit from her would not constitute a disturbance whenever it took place. He would welcome it. And, anyway, where else could he be?
She entered the crumbling building by the Henderson Row doorway, and feeling the cool air of the place she remembered the last time she had gone there, less than a year earlier. Then it had been in the depth of winter, early December, and the mist of her breath had been visible in its freezing interior and the space had seemed threatening, entirely alien to her. Ducking under the grimy bed sheets that formed a makeshift barrier between the two studios, she recognised Kathleen Ferrier’s low tones, singing Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde’. Nature would renew itself once more, she thought, but not for Nicholas Lyon to tend or tame, and a picture of the gardens at Geanbank, rank and overgrown, appeared before her eyes.
The unplastered brick walls of the dilapidated studio were covered, as before, with sketches of human figures, cavorting at the circus, riding bareback, or performing exercises within a gymnasium. Her study of the drawings ended when her attention was caught by the sound of the hammer and she saw Ian Melville, seated on a sofa in the corner of the room, concentrating hard, absorbed in fashioning a picture frame and blithely unaware of her entrance. She began to move towards him, but stopped at an easel to view the drawing resting on it. A light pencil sketch of a naked woman reclining on a bed. The work betrayed tenderness; imperfections recorded but not dwelt upon; a portrait, not simply a ruthless exercise in observation. Looking at the head, she started on recognising her own face, felt momentarily rattled to find herself scrutinising someone else’s image of her, as if she was indulging in some form of extreme egoism.
‘When did you do it?’ she asked, her voice sharper than she had intended.
The man looked up and she watched as his face reddened, suffused with blood, more embarrassed now than ever when naked, as if his drawing of her had exposed something far more personal than his own unclothed body. He recovered quickly.
‘When do you think? Early in the morning when you were still asleep. D’you mind? I’m just making a frame for it, to give it to you.’
A quick succession of unwanted thoughts flitted through her head before she answered. Had he drawn all the other women that he had slept with? Was the picture a form of record of a conquest, like the notches on a Spitfire’s wing? Would it have been worse if he had photographed her, unconscious and asleep, instead? She glanced again at the picture and found that what she saw allayed the sudden panic that had risen within her. It was not some stolen glimpse of a meaningless encounter; rather a depiction that could only have sprung from genuine intimacy, true sympathy with the subject.
‘No, I don’t mind. I’ve just come from the hospital. Nicholas Lyon’s dead. He died less than an hour ago.’
She had not expected his death to affect her as it had, but somehow in her mind his fate had become linked with that of her mother. If he could just survive, then she, too, would survive. And the sadness she had felt, gazing at the still, small figure in the hospital bed had, to her shame, expanded, swollen and consumed her, releasing all the anxieties she had been trying to control, to make her day-to-day life possible. But all she could think about then, and now, was her beloved mother in the shadow of that evil disease.
The next morning Alice was swearing to herself, unable to find the paper copy of Doctor Zenabi’s report in among the midden of papers covering her desk. Alistair plonked a mug of tea on her diary.
‘You heard?’
‘Heard what?’ she asked, irritation at this interruption clear in her voice.
‘The Sheriff’s partner. He died last night.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘How come? Anyway, apparently, he’s got a child. A grownup daughter actually. The boss wants us to spend the morning tracking her down.’
‘Well, Bingo!’ Alice said, abandoning the search and taking a sip from the mug, ‘we’ve done it already!’
‘What on earth are you going on about?’
‘Yesterday night… I spent some of it with the old fellow at the hospital. A nurse came in, just before he died. She would have shooed me away unless I claimed to be a family member. So I said I was. He couldn’t be left to meet his Maker on his own.’
‘Jesus Christ, Alice. You could have mucked things up nicely! Anyway, haven’t you got a home to go to?’
She smiled at him. ‘I have, thanks, and I can do without the lecture. Don’t worry, pal, I’ll speak to the DCI about the phantom child. By the way, I’ve just been on the phone to traffic. Dan there says that they’ve found a few flakes of paint. It seems the car was white and, they reckon, probably, one of the smaller, cheaper makes. Some of the slivers are with the lab now, so they think they’ll have a better clue as to the exact type before too long. They’re attempting calculations on the tyre marks as well, and the photographers are busy at the scene. Dan also said that some uniforms brought in a few shards of broken glass but they’re not sure if they’ve come from the vehicle we’re looking for. Apparently, the fragments are dirty, as if they’d been at the locus for a while. After I’ve seen the boss and explained things, let’s go and see Mrs Nordquist again, eh?‘
‘Certainly. With you as my chaperone.’
Beside her, as always, stood a small glass, filled to the brim with golden fluid. It rested within a hand’s reach of the striped deckchair, which sagged beneath the weight of the solid Swedish matron. She did not rise from it to greet the two detectives when they were shown into her paved back garden. Instead, she pulled up the rug that concealed her naked body until it almost reached her chin. On one side, however, an expanse of pink flesh was visible. Conscious of their surprise, she said to her visitors in a matter of fact tone: ‘…the sowna. I haff von in the basement.’