Alex Gray - A small weeping

Fraser made a derisory noise. ‘You mean all that screeching and carrying on?’

‘What screeching was that, Mr Fraser?’ Wilson put in. Lorimer pretended to scribble something on a pad in front of him, avoiding eye contact.

If Wilson could capture his attention then he’d be free to observe the patient’s body language. Right now he was sitting, hands clasped between his knees as if, despite the sun’s heat through the glass, he was feeling cold.

‘Mrs Duncan. She raised the roof with her racket. Came right up the stairs to fetch Mrs Baillie. I think anyone would’ve heard it through the partition walls. I certainly could.’

‘You don’t have any sleeping medication, then, Mr Fraser?’

‘Not at the moment,’ he replied, sitting up a bit straighter as he spoke.

Lorimer nodded to himself. A patient on his way to recovery, perhaps?

‘How well did you know Nurse MacLeod?’

Fraser shrugged, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Not that well. She was nice. Nice looking too. She always made sure we were comfortable at bedtime. She’d go to the bother of bringing me up a hot water bottle. That sort of thing.’

‘Did she ever talk about herself?’

‘No. Not really. I’d asked where she was from. The accent made me curious. But she didn’t really tell me much about herself.’ Fraser looked hard at Alistair Wilson. ‘We’re a pretty self-absorbed lot in here, you know. Fragile psyches and all that,’ he sneered. Lorimer watched as his foot began to tap rapidly up and down, an involuntary movement, agitated. He wondered what the man’s blood pressure would be if he had it taken right now. A worm-coloured vein on Fraser’s temple stood out and Lorimer could imagine the beat of a pulse.

‘Where were you last night, Mr Fraser, from midnight onwards?’

The foot tapping stopped abruptly and the man uncrossed his leg, looking towards Lorimer who had suddenly asked the question. For a moment he said nothing, simply stared at the Chief Inspector as if he had temporarily forgotten his presence.

‘In bed. In my bed in my room. All night.’

‘And can anybody verify this?’

Fraser looked from one man to the other, bewildered at this sudden change of tack.

‘I don’t know. Kirsty and Mrs Duncan were the only two who would have been able to say I was in my room. They were the night staff on duty.’ He twisted his face into a frown. ‘But that’s going to be the same for all of us. Except…’

He stopped, rubbing his hands up and down the thighs of his joggers.

‘Except?’ Lorimer prompted.

‘Some patients are on suicide watch. They have nurses posted along the corridor who sit there all night just in case.’

‘And you’d have had to pass them to reach the back of the clinic, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ Fraser replied, something like relief in his face. ‘Yes. Any of them would have seen me if I’d passed that way.’

‘Mr Fraser, you’ve been very helpful. I’m sorry we’ve had to disturb you but it is important that we have some sort of input from all the people who were here last night. Do you remember anything else, perhaps? A strange sound from outside?’ Wilson asked.

‘No. Nothing I can remember.’

‘Well, if there is anything at all, please get in touch with us. We’d be most grateful for anything you might recall later,’ DS Wilson rose to his feet and slid a card across the table.

‘That’s the number to ring. We’ll be issuing this to all of the staff and patients,’ he smiled warmly and Fraser nodded, glancing warily at Lorimer before standing up again.

‘I can go now?’

‘Of course, sir, and thank you once more for your cooperation,’ Wilson’s smile was positively beatific.

‘Constable, would you ask Jennifer Townslie to come in, please?’

At last Lorimer was downing a cup of coffee. The morning had been reasonably productive. They had been able to eliminate most of the residents from their inquiries. Some, as Lorimer had suspected, had been dead to the world having been given sleeping pills. These included a few women with eating disorders who were on the upper floor. None of them were currently on suicide watch. Some of the residents were pretty frail and Lorimer knew it would have taken someone of considerable strength to attack and strangle the young nurse.

What most of them had heard amounted to very little other than the furore caused by the auxiliary, Mrs Duncan. It was time to wheel her in. Lorimer wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘OK?’

Alistair Wilson gave a brief nod. They’d discussed this at some length. This was one witness whose statement would be crucial to the investigation. He just hoped she was in a better state than she’d been the previous night.

Brenda Duncan was a portly woman in her fifties. She rolled slightly as she entered the room, a thick winter coat folded clumsily over one arm, her handbag clutched in two ungloved fists. As she sank into the chair in front of him, Lorimer could see that her eyes were heavy. It didn’t take much to guess that she’d been given some kind of medication after her trauma. She was smiling uncertainly and he wondered if she’d ever had to encounter the police before.

‘Mrs Duncan,’ Wilson’s voice was all concern, ‘thank you so much for coming back in. We realise how bad this has been for you.’ He gave his most encouraging smile as if to say there was nothing to worry about, they’d take care of it all. Lorimer could see the woman’s shoulders visibly relax.

‘Just take your time and tell us everything that happened yesterday evening.’

‘Well, when I found poor Kirsty…’

‘No,’ Lorimer broke in, ‘before that, please. We’d like you to tell us everything that happened from the time you arrived for your shift.’

‘Oh.’ The woman looked from one of them to the other. Her mouth was open and her eyes looked vacant for a moment. Lorimer wondered just how much medication she’d been given. And by whom? a little voice asked.

The mouth closed and the jaw became firmer. Her bosom heaved in a long sigh. ‘I start at ten so I was here at about twenty-to. The bus drops me off at the Monument and I walk the rest of the way. It only takes about five minutes or so. The patients are usually ready for their beds although there’s no strict rule. We don’t put out lights or anything like that. They can sit up and watch telly if they like. Some of them don’t sleep too well, either. But most of them are early bedders.

‘And which ones aren’t, Mrs Duncan?’ Lorimer wanted to know.

‘Oh,’ the woman looked confused as if unsure whether by imparting this information she might be implicating a patient.

‘Sometimes Leigh sits up late. He likes to watch the creepy programmes.’ She leant forward, speaking in a whisper of confidentiality, ‘I don’t think he should, mind you, but that kind of thing’s not my decision.’

‘Leigh?’ Lorimer was looking down the list of patients’ names.

‘Leigh Quinn,’ Mrs Duncan supplied. ‘The Irishman,’ Wilson added.

Lorimer nodded. Leigh Quinn had been practically non-verbal during his interview, staring out of the window mostly. Afterwards they’d decided that a good look at his case notes would be required. The man didn’t seem quite on the same planet as the other patients.

‘Did you notice anything unusual during the earlier part of your shift, Mrs, Duncan?’ asked Wilson.

Brenda Duncan chewed her bottom lip for a moment or two, her eyes fixed on the bag on her lap. Then she shook her head, still gazing down as if struggling to see the events of the previous night in her mind.

‘Nothing untoward, then. Just a normal night?’

The woman nodded her head.

‘Where were you before you found Nurse MacLeod’s body?’ Wilson spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.