Adrian Magson - Execution

It was a new man, fresh-faced and friendly. He decided to go for broke, relying on a strong grain of truth.

‘I’m here to interview one of the nurses,’ he said, waving his MI5 card. ‘About the. . uh, business the other night.’

The guard nodded, flattered by being assumed to be in on the events of two nights ago, a colleague by implication. He glanced at Harry’s card, eyebrows lifting. ‘Of course, sir. You know where to go?’ He picked up a pen, ready to make a note in his log.

‘Thanks.’ Harry held up a hand. ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that, if that’s all right. The fewer names the better with this.’

‘Oh, right. Of course.’ The guard looked impressed. Put down the pen.

Harry walked along the corridor to the nurses’ station, where a young woman he’d seen on his last visit was making notes on a clipboard. Her name badge read Casey. She had red hair and pale skin, like a girl from a Renaissance painting.

‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘Can I help? Oh.’ Her face registered recognition. ‘You came to see Clare.’ Then her expression changed. ‘You know she isn’t here, don’t you?’

Harry nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I heard you’d all been re-assigned.’

‘Most, yes. Not me, though; I’ve been away, so they missed me.’ She smiled. ‘Lucky me, eh? Lots of excitement.’

Harry returned the smile and explained, ‘I’m not here in an official capacity; I’m a colleague. I’m just worried about her.’

She looked round as the squeak of footsteps approached along the corridor, and her voice dropped. ‘Actually, I’ve been wondering who to talk to. She needs help. You were the only person who ever came to see her. The others were just checking up, although they pretended to be work friends.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t talk here, though.’

‘Fine. Where?’

She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m on a lunch break in twenty minutes. I’ll see you outside in Bessemer Road up from the main entrance.’ She looked past him and smiled brightly as a woman security guard walked by, then added softly with a wry smile, ‘Sorry, but there’s nowhere private in this place. I’m sure they’ve got the place bugged throughout.’

‘Are you some kind of spook?’ Casey lit a cigarette and gazed at Harry for a moment. ‘You probably wouldn’t tell me if you were, though, would you?’

‘No,’ Harry agreed, ‘I probably wouldn’t. But what makes you assume that?’

‘I don’t know, exactly.’ She looked around as they walked side-by-side along the street, the bulk of the hospital building to their right. ‘Something about you, I suppose. And the other men who came to see Clare.’ She stopped. ‘I’ve been doing this long enough to get a feel about people. Not just the patients, but visitors and. . others. Some have an aura, you know? My dad was in Special Branch. Some of his friends had this air about them, like they had secrets they couldn’t talk about, that the rest of us weren’t in on. Weird.’

‘What did you want to tell me?’

She dropped her cigarette and turned to face him. ‘OK, this is going to sound crazy, right. But the other night, when Clare left. . I had a feeling she was building up to something.’ She turned and started walking again, then turned back immediately. ‘When Melrose came in-’

‘Melrose?’

‘Yes, the Russian or Pole or whatever he was. He was admitted through the back door. I mean, literally, the back door. Like a delivery of new equipment. What the hell was that all about? I knew something strange was happening. Anyway, he was ranting and raving in his sleep — I mean, really shouting, like the worst kind of fever. But none of us could understand him, which didn’t help. One of the auxiliaries is married to a guy from over that way and she thought he might have been Ukrainian. Then Clare told me he was asking for water.’ She took out another cigarette and lit up. ‘Sorry — filthy habit, I know, but if you worked in there, you’d. . Anyway, she told me he wanted a drink of water, so I assumed she understood the language. She denied it, and said she just knew what water was in Russian from school. Varda or something similar.’

She had understood a lot more than that, thought Harry. But he didn’t tell Casey. ‘Was that all?’

‘Well, she didn’t say anything else about him. But she seemed different after that. Like she’d had this kick of energy go through her. . like a light being switched on.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘No, not really. Some get back into it quite quickly, others need something to jolt them. But Clare had been. . well, you know how she was: like a living corpse, poor thing. Anyway, suddenly she began to sit up and talk more, taking an interest, asking questions. She hadn’t done that before. It was slow, of course, but getting there.’

‘What sort of questions?’

She shrugged. ‘Weird stuff, mostly. About the layout of the hospital, where the staff entrance was, was the place covered by CCTV, that sort of thing. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because I figured showing any interest in her surroundings was better than none. Before that, she’d just lain there, barely moving.’

Harry nodded. Clare hadn’t said much the last time he’d seen her, beyond telling him where to go in two precise words. Even then, Casey had mentioned that she would only get well if she wanted to. At the time, it had not been an encouraging sign.

‘Did she ever say where she might go — what her plans were after leaving hospital?’

‘No, nothing like that. Some patients don’t. They keep it inside until they’re ready. Some don’t ever let on where they come from, like they can’t bear to talk about it in case they don’t make it, I suppose. But if she was starting to think about going home, that was good, right? She wasn’t near ready for it, though. I tried to tell her, but I don’t think it got through.’

‘What about Melrose? Did she say anything else about him?’

‘No. She buttoned right up after that first bit about water. I assumed she felt sorry for him because he couldn’t speak English. But thinking about it now, I wonder if something happened the evening she left.’

Harry stopped walking. ‘Why would you think that?’

Casey tossed the cigarette into the gutter, as if she were unconvinced about the need for it. ‘He’d been shouting again, although only Clare could hear him properly, being just across the corridor. I popped in to see her before going off duty, and she seemed confused.’

‘How?’

‘Well, she was pulling at the top sheet, folding and re-folding it, and asked me where her clothes were. She hadn’t done that before, but we try to make patients feel safe — a sense of having their things close by — so I told her, in the wardrobe, where they’d always been. It wasn’t a secret and I thought it might help calm her down. She couldn’t have her blouse, though, which had been thrown away; it was covered in blood.’

Harry remembered all too well, but didn’t say so. ‘Go on.’

‘I’d got her a spare T-shirt — we have an odds-and-ends cupboard for emergencies like that. I told her everything was in the wardrobe and she seemed to calm down a little after that. But that’s not unusual; it doesn’t take much to change their moods. I was going to recommend a sedative because I thought she was going stir-crazy, like some patients do — especially from the military. In the end, though, I didn’t. I doubt she would have taken it, anyway.’ She looked up at him. ‘That was the last time I saw her. Or the new guard.’

Harry held his breath. ‘A new guard?’

‘Yes. Big bloke, not like ours. Looked like he could chew barbed wire. He arrived the same time as Melrose.’ She shivered. ‘He gave me the creeps. It was obvious he was there to look after Melrose, though. He never spoke to the other guards and used to sit inside Melrose’s room most of time, except when he went on a break.’