Sharp scratch, p.31
Sharp Scratch, page 31
There was no other way out of the house save through the kitchen. She was glad to be leaning on Diaz’s shoulder when she faced Christie for the last time. She was slumped at the kitchen table with a pill carton and a bottle of whisky and glass laid out neatly before her. Her head was tilted gawkily, the jade stones of her eyes open and clownish, streaked with make-up and drying blood. Looking away, Lorraine wondered what grisly tableau Harvey might have created for her own demise, if he hadn’t taken flight from the police.
Then she was outside in the rain and a paramedic was offering her a blanket.
‘Keep my jacket,’ Diaz said. ‘I’ll come and get it later when I take your statement.’
Lorraine was scarcely listening. She was hobbling towards the van with flashing blue lights, where a small white-faced figure was smacking her palm against the window.
‘Mum!’
Lorraine hauled herself up the ambulance steps and gathered Jasmine into her arms.
‘You did it,’ she said, looking at her daughter through amazed tears. ‘My hero. My big brave girl.’
Detachment
Question 60: I feel uncomfortable when other people express strong feelings and emotions.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Detached, impersonal, critical, aloof, cool, distrustful, discomfited by inability to fix problems.
Whitsuntide
The garden dedicated to Rose’s memory had been Doctor Lehman’s idea. She had tracked Lorraine down to her mum’s flat after news spread about the case, keen to check how her erstwhile student was coping. Lorraine had reassured her that she had been signed off sick and was recovering well after a few days in hospital.
‘I’m pleased you didn’t confide the results to the police,’ the tutor told her.
Lorraine’s voice wobbled; she still couldn’t speak about that day. All she said was, ‘I want to forget it all now. But I do want to remember Rose.’
‘Good. It’s important not to bury tragic events by failing to speak about them. Organisations have memories as well as people. I suggest you bring everyone together to celebrate Rose’s life in a manner that she might have chosen.’
It was the last thing Lorraine felt like doing. Yet as the newsrooms moved on to other big stories, she realised that all their memories of Rose were slipping away. Her mind drifted to the abandoned garden at the rear of the hospital and how Rose would have loved it, too. Yes, she had to do something before Rose’s spirit faded and died, like a failing torch.
The next day Lorraine contacted a local heritage charity. Soon the dank ponds and tangles of brambles and briars were being enthusiastically restored back to the glory displayed in the Victorian engravings she’d seen on Norman’s wall. A few weekends later, Lorraine and Jasmine turned up to see decades of weeds and rubble being dug from the hard ground. Nestling deep in the earth the volunteers had also found old corms and bulbs, not only of snowdrops but windflowers, lilies and daffodils. It felt like a wonderful sign. Then together she and Jasmine planted two rows of tight-budded rose standards.
‘Welcome all. It is humbling to witness all the help, hard work and creativity gathered here today in this extraordinary project.’
The hospital’s new general manager was speaking at the subdued opening ceremony. Gareth Miller was a serious but approachable chief nurse from the Midlands with a wide circle of connections and some impressive new ideas. Lorraine’s first impressions were of a stern introvert but he was also an academic, decisive and fair, with a career in research and useful experience as manager of a vast general hospital. Most importantly, Gareth had immediately enthused about Lorraine’s garden idea and found money in a contingency fund to cover the charity’s expenses.
Lorraine edged away from the crowd and watched from the sheltering trees. There was Phil, looking sober in a dark suit and tie. He was a friend now, though she saw him less often since he’d returned to work. As two lone parents they helped each other out, Lorraine minding Tim when Phil worked at weekends, and Phil still overseeing Lorraine’s attempts to get rehoused. Her old house on Balaclava Street had been flattened, so at least she was now inching to the top of the housing list.
‘Though I never knew Rose myself,’ Gareth Miller was saying gravely, ‘I have heard only good of her, not only of her dedication but her kindness and generosity.’
Of the former management team, only Doctor Strang and Mike McClung were present, both listening attentively. The charges against Raj had been dropped. The police had struggled to find hard evidence of him gaining pecuniary advantage from falsified records, though he had certainly favoured his landlord by promoting his taxi company. Raj had immediately resigned and though currently working as an accountant to a private firm, her old friend had chosen not to return her calls.
Norman Pilling had also gone, clutching an engraved gilt clock and the promise of a tidy pension. The next day his office had been cleared out, producing trolley-loads of obstinate bureaucracy.
Now Gareth Miller wound up his speech. ‘It is important that both our staff and the patients in our care find a space for healing and renewal. May the fruitfulness of nature live on in the seeds and flowers of this delightful garden. Thank you.’
Lorraine joined in the ripple of applause and then drifted away from familiar faces, all of them keen to talk about her ordeal. She was still under orders from Brunt to tell no one about Harvey’s presence at Christie’s house. At times that final encounter with Harvey felt like a terrifying hallucination. Still vivid in flashbacks was that long moment when she had expected him to kill her. And her instincts had been right: Harvey’s lie that Christie had committed suicide was soon disproved by the forensics team. He was wanted for Christie Kerr’s murder.
Doctor Lehman’s words still haunted her, that some psychopaths targeted positions of power from which to manipulate their gullible underlings. Christie Kerr had exhibited textbook traits: a history of cruelty, lack of remorse and a shallow charm. More confusing were her memories of Harvey. She should have guessed he had plenty to hide when he had refused to take the PX60 test. Instead, he had given her that impromptu account of himself, describing himself as a people-loving, benevolent, golf-playing old chap. And she had almost believed him.
She slipped away from the memorial garden into a glade of beech trees. Firstly, she searched out a particular bench overlooking an ornamental pond. There she read the brass plaque on the seat: ‘Sister Bernadette Ince – devoted nurse for more than 40 years’. No one knew why Christie had gone to Marlow Court and killed Sister Ince, but an incriminating strand of dyed auburn hair had proved that she had done so. Lorraine paused at the bench and murmured a few words of farewell.
In a darker, shadier corner stood another bench dedicated to ‘Eric Fryer, 1955–1983’. Officially, there had been no words of tribute to the drug-fuelled porter. It was Lily who had pressed for this small remembrance. Touching the plaque, she murmured, ‘I’m so sorry, Rikki. Be at peace. Wherever you are.’
A figure appeared through the trees, stocky and uncharacteristically hesitant. He waited a dozen paces away from her.
‘You ready to go?’ Diaz asked.
They walked together to his car, Lorraine bracing herself against what they might yet face, relieved that Diaz had suggested he’d give her a lift. As they crossed the hospital site Lorraine silently marvelled at being back at the Memorial again. The bruises and glass-cuts from her confrontation with Christie Kerr had slowly ceased to hurt and then faded away. Then, surreally, she had returned to work. The odd thing was that she hadn’t minded too much about coming back in. At first she told herself it was the promise of a change for the better in Gareth Miller’s appointment. He had called her into his office and disdainfully picked up Norman Pilling’s threat of disciplinary action, torn it into pieces, and dropped the shreds in the waste bin.
‘I’m not interested in raking over some cloudy past.’
Lorraine gave her heartfelt thanks.
He leant forward and steepled his fingers below his direct, intelligent gaze. ‘It’s only fair to tell you, your name came up at a regional review meeting. There’s an idea that we need to give a push to these psychological techniques, to recruit and promote the best – and be sure we weed out any dangerous personalities. What do you think?’
‘It sounds a brilliant job.’
Gareth cocked his head to one side, smiling. ‘Write yourself a job description and send it to the regional director. The work will be based in Manchester, developing projects across the North West. I’m making no promises, but I know there’s a budget and your name came up.’
From the moment she’d left his office her brain had been fizzing with excited ideas.
Nevertheless, as she walked up the main corridor at Diaz’s side, she felt a stirring of fondness for the tatty old hospital as they dodged dinner trolleys and wheelchairs, avoiding patients hobbling behind Zimmer frames, or people hurrying from appointments that had delivered joyful relief or devastating news. Amongst them were the hospital’s staff – hugely annoying, often belligerent, exhausted, but the living heart of the service’s success. She had used to wonder why they turned up for such punishing shifts. The answer wasn’t only in their shields of professional epaulettes and badges. In the language of the PX60 a good few of them were ideals of Dutifulness, Toughness and Self-reliance. If Christie Kerr had taught her anything, it was that the urge to heal that Christie lacked was thankfully possessed by plenty of her colleagues. The regional project would give her the chance to make the service better – as well as being the sort of challenge she’d genuinely like to tackle.
She dared a direct glance at Diaz as they were getting into the police Rover. She’d barely seen him since he’d taken her statement in hospital, and never alone. He had been busy tying up the case, while she had requested that her own and Jasmine’s part should be kept out of any press reports. Then he had been sent away on a residential course about new developments in policing. And now the time had come when they must surely be able to talk freely. She had found it hard to forget him, despite the differences in her own and Diaz’s personalities. Instead she’d recalled their attraction the night of the gig and her subsequent devastation when she’d learnt he had a pregnant fiancée all along.
When Doctor Lehman had phoned, Lorraine had asked her: ‘Do you think I can ever trust a man who has lied to me?’
‘Did you ever lie to him?’ her tutor replied waspishly.
Lorraine reflected on that. She hadn’t told him about Jasmine or very much at all about her own life. ‘Well, not so much lied as – sort of deflected him.’
‘Maybe you both put up a false front,’ Doctor Lehman said. ‘Only by learning about vulnerability can we give any relationship a chance. By admitting negative feelings: bottled-up anger or disappointment, fears or vulnerabilities. These are the genuine emotions that true friends or a loving couple risk sharing. Think of Psyche’s courage in lighting her candle and raising it to see the true face of her lover. Try it.’
That had sounded easy back then, but now, as she watched him driving, Diaz looked distracted, even moody.
‘Any news of Harvey?’ she asked.
He kept his eyes on the road. ‘The official line is that we’re looking for him to assist in our enquiries. But he and his wife have definitely done a bunk. He had arranged to have his pension paid early and it’s been cleared out of his account, along with a fortune in savings. Nothing came back from the alerts at ports and airports. Could be he took a private boat to the continent. I reckon he’s somewhere far, far away by now.
‘I did find something interesting, mind. Remember when we first looked around the medical records basement? I had a hunch the answer was down there. I took a look at Harvey Wright’s medical file. I reckoned there had to be a link to Christie Kerr.’
She remembered the morning the clerks had found medical files scattered all over the floor. ‘What did you find?’
‘Not a dicky bird in Harvey’s file. So I got hold of his wife’s records. The only unusual item was a newly filed coding letter from Carlisle Infirmary. It looked suspicious, as if everything about a health issue in Carlisle had been stripped out of the file. So I rang them up. Bingo. 1962, Mr and Mrs Wright were at a golf tournament in Carlisle. Brenda Wright fell from a grandstand and broke her ankle. She turned up in Casualty at Carlisle Infirmary. Fortunately for us the nurse signed the admissions card. Staff Nurse Felicity Jardine.’
‘So he knew her,’ Lorraine grasped excitedly. ‘Hang on – ’62. This is the real Felicity Jardine. Harvey met her before she emigrated.’
Diaz’s face grew serious. ‘Yes. So years later when he found a nurse with the same name and nursing medal had been appointed at the Memorial, he spotted the deception.’
‘To Harvey management was all about “trading favours”,’ Lorraine said. ‘And he got a pretty big favour in return for keeping quiet. She made his son disappear into Fairholme. Harvey told me he and his wife had been desperate. But it’s no excuse. Do you know who tampered with the file?’
‘Harvey. His prints were on it.’
He steered the car down to the traffic lights and waited at a red, and tapped nervously on the wheel before suddenly turning to face her.
‘I also got hold of the real Felicity Jardine in Australia. Just before midnight last night.’ He released his breath in a puff of disbelief. ‘I’m still gobsmacked. It must have been an Oscar-winning impersonation by Christie Kerr. The genuine Felicity is her complete and utter opposite. She’s a really decent woman, married to a cattle farmer, mum to four children. Resigned from nursing in Australia years ago. I told her Christie Kerr was dead and had stolen her identity. She was surprised right enough, hearing it out of the blue. And disappointed at being used. When I told her Christie had been murdered she said, “I did wonder if she was on a dark road.”’
Lorraine wondered who could ever have guessed that road’s destination. Alone of them all, she had seen that waxen reflection in the Treatment Room’s mirror. The Felicity Jardine they had all known had worn a mask of silvered glass: shallow and reflective and hiding God knew what damage beneath it.
‘Then a totally weird thing happened,’ Diaz continued, pushing his foot down as the lights changed. ‘When I mentioned Eric Fryer, she said she thought about him nearly every day. I told her it was Christie who killed him. That he must have been expecting to meet up with her. You know what she said? “Now you’ve told me that, I wish to God I’d never helped that girl. I’ll carry this on my conscience for ever.”’
Diaz shook his head, pondering. ‘There was the obvious question of course, because of the morphine at the crime scene. Was Fryer trying to blackmail Jardine about something dodgy in her past?’
‘Yes, I thought about that too,’ Lorraine said. ‘You do hear about cases of bedridden children being molested. Rikki must have been very vulnerable. But surely women don’t do that?’
‘Well, the real Felicity wanted to talk about it. Said she knew it wasn’t acceptable nursing practice nowadays, but she’d allowed what she called a deep affection to form between her and the boy. Strapped in that frame, he was scared witless and alone. She felt passionately that being taken from his home and family was causing more mental damage than physical benefit. So she tried to show him what maternal love and affection were.’
Lorraine recalled the good-natured nurse in the photograph standing beside Rikki, her reassuring hand on the boy’s skinny shoulder.
‘“I’d have got sacked on the spot nowadays,” she said. “Been called a pervert for holding him in my arms in his bed.” Said he’d broken her heart. Talked about the psychology she’d learnt on her nurse training – the theory that a child deprived of its mother’s affection would likely turn into what they called a juvenile delinquent.
‘There was no question of anything inappropriate, she insisted, or at least not by the rules back then. But it was proper, powerful love on both sides. He was her “best boy in the world”. She even looked into adopting him, but they wouldn’t allow it with him having a mother of his own. And then she met her husband and moved on. Rikki was due to go home soon and she hoped she’d done enough to give him a secure start in life. “But I failed him, didn’t I?” was the last thing she said. “It was all my fault.”’
Lorraine took a while to reflect on what she’d heard. She shook her head and said, ‘Looks like the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, after all. Who would have thought love could prove so dangerous?’
By the time they turned off the East Lancs, the phrase still echoed in the silence and their exuberance seemed to have vanished. She knew there was something wrong.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s up?’ she asked.
They were approaching the car park at the rear of the sheltered housing units. A moment later he switched off the engine and only a gentle ticking broke the silence. She had imagined this moment over the past few weeks. The secret part of her wanted to make a go of it with him. In fact, she felt she bloody well deserved him.
He reached for her hand and gripped it hard. ‘My life’s complicated.’
‘I heard about Shirley.’
He had the grace to look stricken. ‘She’s pregnant. Well, she’s miscarried before. I made a promise to marry her. And she’s just so – desperate at the moment.’
All the good things that had happened to Lorraine turned instantly to dust. ‘Oh, and everything’s just hunky-dory for me,’ she managed to say without choking up.
He gave an irritated shake of his head. ‘You are completely different. Opposites. You’re strong. I want to do the right thing. When the kid’s born and things have settled down, then we’ll get together. In the meantime it’s going to be hard. The odd evening, when I can see you. OK?’
