Ken McClure: White death

Trish was on the floor. She was sitting at a strange angle with her back propped up against one of the cupboards. Her arm was bare and livid flesh was peeling off it from where she had obviously suffered severe burns. The gas flames from a front burner on the hob and the pot lying on its side on the floor beside her told a horrifying tale of boiling water.

Virginia’s throat went into spasm and for a moment she couldn’t speak as she fell to her knees beside Trish, her mind a whirlpool of shock and terror. ‘Oh my God, Trish… oh my God…Trish, speak to me…’

Trish appeared to be in shock. She was staring unseeingly into the middle distance with glazed eyes. She seemed frighteningly calm when Virginia expected her to be writhing in pain. ‘I didn’t feel…’

Virginia completed the sentence in her head… I didn’t feel I could stand it any more… Her daughter had tried to burn the rash off with boiling water… She got up and punched three nines into the kitchen phone on the wall with a shaking forefinger and without taking her eyes off her daughter. She almost screamed her request for an ambulance but the calm voice of the operator talked her into giving all relevant information.

Virginia was only vaguely aware of well-meaning neighbours asking what was wrong as she followed the stretcher bearing her daughter downstairs to the ambulance. ‘An accident…’ she murmured. ‘Trish has had an accident…’

Virginia was an hour into her vigil at Trish’s bedside when she became aware of someone appearing at her shoulder. She glanced up and saw that it was Scott Haldane.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘Sleeping. They sedated her. They’re not sure yet about her arm… how did you know?’

‘When you didn’t turn up at the surgery I popped round to see what was wrong. The neighbours told me about the accident.’

‘Accident?’ murmured Virginia bitterly.

Haldane felt his blood run cold. ‘What are you saying?’ he whispered hoarsely.

Virginia didn’t take her eyes from her sleeping daughter. ‘Trish decided to treat the rash in her own way…’

Haldane shook his head in horror. ‘No,’ he protested. ‘Trish is a perfectly level-headed girl. She was upset but she wouldn’t do anything like that…’

‘It’s what she said,’ interrupted Virginia.

Haldane shook his head. ‘Tell me exactly what she said.’

‘She said she didn’t feel she could go on.’

Haldane shook his head again as if unwilling to believe what he was hearing and then a thought seemed to occur to him. ‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘Her precise words, nothing else.’

Virginia looked at him as if he were making some kind of a mountain out of a molehill but rather than argue she took the easiest course of action and said, ‘She said, “I didn’t feel…” She didn’t have to say any more. I knew what she meant. I’m her mother.’ She looked up at Haldane and saw the questioning look on his face. ‘What is it?’

Haldane behaved as if he hadn’t heard her. He gave her a preoccupied look and mumbled something about having to go.

Marlborough Court

London

July 2007

Dr Steven Dunbar opened his eyes at the ring of the alarm and let out a groan. He could have done with another hour in bed but he had to be at the Home Office by ten. Normally, a summons to the Home Office with the prospect of a new case to investigate would have had him fired with enthusiasm and champing at the bit but a slight over-indulgence in gin and tonic the night before had taken the edge off this and left him with a nasty headache instead. He made some strong black coffee and used it to wash down three aspirins before taking a shower and lingering longer than usual in the soothing spray before he revisited his problem.

Steven’s problem was Jenny, his nine-year-old daughter, and her new-found skill in manipulating grown-ups.

Steven’s wife Lisa had died of a brain tumour many years before and since that time Jenny had lived with his sister-in-law Sue and her solicitor husband Richard in the Dumfriesshire village of Glenvane in Scotland. She had been brought up as one of their family along with their own two children, Robin and Mary, with Steven making a point of visiting as often as he could — usually every second weekend, at least for a week in the summer and with special efforts being made at birthday time and Christmas.

In the early years, Steven had seen the arrangement as being temporary — he just needed time to get back on his feet after the nightmare of losing Lisa — but as time had gone on, reality had struck home and he had come to accept that there was no way he could do the job he did and bring up a daughter on his own. Apart from that Jenny was happy and settled with Sue and Richard and their family and they had quickly come to love her as one of their own.

Sue had been very close to Lisa and often remarked that she could see so much of her sister in Jenny as she grew up. Steven had noticed this too and it could bring a lump to his throat. The thought that Lisa lived on in Jenny gave him something to cling to in dark moments when he found himself dwelling on his loss — something that still happened from time to time, even after all these years.

Usually, something simple would trigger it off, seeing a family walking by the Embankment on a sunny afternoon, opening the door to his apartment on a winter’s evening and finding nothing there but darkness and silence. These incidents, however, were few and far between these days but when they did happen, Steven had to remind himself that he didn’t have a lifestyle that permitted the playing of happy families on anything approaching a regular basis. He had a job that was demanding, unpredictable and occasionally downright dangerous. He didn’t know where he would be from one day to the next and, on more than one occasion over the years, he’d come within an ace of losing his life.

He had met Lisa on his first big investigation for Sci-Med after having been sent to a hospital in Glasgow where she had been one of the nurses. That particular assignment had brought both of them into danger although they had seen this as the exception rather than the rule with neither suspecting that the job would be any kind of impediment to married life. Now with the benefit of hindsight, he had to admit that there had been several more ‘exceptions to the rule’ over the years, perhaps too many for him even to consider inviting another woman to share his life without him having to give up the job.

This did not mean that female company had been absent from his life during his widower years. A number of women had appeared on the scene like shooting stars, bringing love back into his life, but, for one reason or another, these relationships — and a couple of them had been very special — had all proved ill-fated before the need for the final hurdle to be crossed. Could he give up the job? He wasn’t at all sure.

Jenny’s latest ploy had been to play off Sue and Richard against him. If Sue had occasion to discipline her she would react by pointing out that she didn’t have the right; she wasn’t her real mother and that she wanted to go and live in London with her father. When Steven told her that this was not possible she had accused him of not really loving her and abandoning her in Scotland. Sue and Richard were very understanding about Jenny’s behaviour and recognised it for what it was — childish tantrums — as did Steven. Jenny could not have had any more loving parents than Sue and Richard and she loved them too except when she was having one of her moments.

Despite this, Steven still felt bad about the whole thing. Perhaps it was guilt over never having really tried to find the kind of job that would have permitted him to bring up a daughter or perhaps it was hearing the accusations that Jenny had levelled at him about not loving her, but he had felt bad enough to climb into the bottle on the previous evening. But today was another day and he had to get his act together before he went to see John Macmillan at the Home Office.