Night Sisters

Saturday night was probably going to be busier (much busier, knowing our luck) but I was off, so it wasn’t my worry. I woke up late on the Saturday afternoon, and just slouched around in my T-shirt for a bit, enjoying the peace and quiet of having the flat to myself. Not that I begrudged Sarah her share of the place: she’s my flatmate – bright, slightly scatterbrained, works on Surgical – and good company as well as someone to split the rent with. I get on with her well enough – and in fact, with her working days and me on nights, we’re not tripping over each other that often. But there are times when you do need space to yourself, without heaps of ironing on chairs, half-cooked meals in the kitchen, or strange boyfriends wandering out of the bathroom when you least expect it.

For my own part, I’d started sleeping regularly with Wendy again. I’d thought it was all over; but now I found I was needing the company more and more. Someone to snuggle up with. Someone to hold on to in the dark. She was still in my room, lying lax on my unmade bed – an outsize rag doll, smiling brightly at the ceiling. I’d won her in a kids’ unit Christmas raffle: years ago.

The cat sidled up to rub itself against my leg as I made myself some toast and coffee. We call him Trinity, which is different, I suppose. Ignoring his wheedling on the grounds that he’d already been fed twice today, I stared out of the window at the neighbouring rooftops and back gardens. The sky was overcast: sullen with cloud. Someone was working on his shed, but other than that it was all quiet: the stillness of a winter afternoon. For no particular reason, I found myself recalling Saturday teatime when I was a kid: my dad and older brother watching the football results while mum and I made the tea and toast, cosy in the kitchen as the outside daylight cooled and faded.

A quick glance under the grill told me the bread was just as white as it had been thirty seconds ago, and I turned back to the window. The radio was chattering happily to itself in the background, and I was ignoring that too, scarcely noticing as the commercial break faded into the local news – but the lead headline put a hook through my idling attention and drew my head round sharply.

Murdered.

That word registered at once; the rest of the sentence took a moment to make sense around it.

‘… a man has been found murdered in a derelict house in …’

Our town. Suddenly I felt my thumb between my teeth.

‘… multiple stab wounds. A post-mortem examination …’

Now there was a rarity – even for a place as big and rough as this one’s getting. We were promised coverage of a scheduled press conference in the next bulletin, and the reporter passed on to other matters – but he left me well behind, still worrying his words – running them through my mind again, and then again. Of course I knew that most murders happen within a family, or circle of acquaintances: the chances were this was just some private, vicious settling of scores. Over and done with. The idea of some maniac walking around – catching people alone and slaughtering them for the hell of it – flitted quickly through my head, but without conviction. That sort of thing might happen in films, or even America; but not here. No: the slightly sick disquiet I suddenly felt came from memories of mutilation I’d seen myself. Not the rough and random mutilation of the car-smash, though, nor even the crude carving of a knife or broken bottle. Rather the precise and pitiless intervention of surgical steel – and outcomes in terms of a heart burst open, a brain top-sliced; a uterus scarred and sterile. Over the past year, someone with detailed medical knowledge had done all that, and maybe more – and maybe he was a maniac, at that. Or maybe something worse.

Much worse. I sensed where my thoughts were going, and almost shook my head to clear it. Pack it in, I told myself flatly: no more nightmares. It was daylight, after all, and the real world was all around me. And there was evil enough in some of the human beings out there, without me having to invent spectres of my own …

Murdered …

I became aware of a sharp reek in my nostrils then: the toast had burned black, and was starting to smoulder.

With Sarah away for the weekend, I had an uninterrupted, empty evening in front of the TV, and an early night. But Sunday was a better day: brighter; clearer. I knew it was a day to visit Jenny.

I took the first bus of the afternoon, travelling across town to the Milston Road cemetery through streets that were quiet and all but empty, apart from the occasional car or someone walking his dog. Getting off by the corner shop just down the road, which really did seem to be open all hours, I bought a modest bunch of flowers (their selection wasn’t that great) before walking slowly on to the open iron gates, and through them into the sunlit silence of the graveyard.

It was an ideal afternoon, fine and crisp; the twigs and branches of denuded trees standing out sharply against the clean, cold blue of the sky. The lawns were tidy as ever; the whole layout of the place spoke of restfulness and calm. I walked past the ordered plots without hurrying, making the most of the atmosphere … the peace … and enjoying the refreshing keenness of the air. But perhaps there was a certain reluctance too that made me tarry: a lurking unwillingness to reach the place I was heading for, and face its reality once again.

At length I got there none the less – the youngest corner of the cemetery, where the long, narrow mounds of earth had yet to be concealed by slabs and headstones. In a way they seemed the better marker: the natural brown of turned soil, offsetting the vivid splash of colour here and there where someone had placed fresh flowers. Much more moving than the ornate monuments of stone and marble all around me. But I knew how it was: how the earth had to be left to settle before the headstone could be erected. And settle meant subside, as the rotting coffin lid finally caved in, and dark earth slithered through to engulf its occupant’s remains.

So how could I picture that happening to Jenny, whom I’d last seen six weeks ago, vivaciously alive, her blue eyes shining – surely not the same person who now lay, cold and still, six feet beneath the mound I’d paused before?

Still not quite believing it, I crouched and laid my flowers on the bare earth.

Silence. No voices or traffic; not even birds. I quite wanted to pray, but my mind just wouldn’t focus. I just sat on my heels there, my coat brushing the dirt, and felt the hot, stinging wetness force its way into my eyes and nostrils. I couldn’t keep it back. I didn’t try.

After I’d finished, I sniffed, and wiped my cheeks, and blew my nose; and felt a little better. More time passed. Finally I gave a small sigh, and rose to my feet; walked over to a nearby bench and sat down.

I knew there were some things about her death I would never fully come to terms with. The shocking senselessness of it; the unanswered questions. But as I sat there, soaking up the atmosphere of calm and stillness around me, I reckoned I was slowly learning to live with it. The cry had done me good, cleared away a lot of pent-up grief and confusion. I still didn’t know why she’d died – but the turmoil inside me had faded now, leaving a sort of resigned acceptance. I did know that I’d loved her very much – and that was a memory I could treasure, and always carry with me.

Letting my gaze ease off across the cemetery, I found myself musing that she probably wouldn’t have wanted a burial – not a free-thinking, practical girl like Jenny. A clean cremation with minimal ceremony would have been much more her scene. I think the church service and the more permanent resting place had been for her mum’s benefit: she’d wanted it that way. It had been a nice service, though. I’d cried then, too.

Still, there were worse places to be remembered. My eyes kept roving over the neatly regimented headstones – picking out the bright patch of a fresh floral tribute here and there; pausing briefly on the occasional fellow-mourner among the graves. Coming to rest on the tramp standing beneath a yew tree some fifty yards along the roadway.

Watching me.

I blinked; frowned slightly. I couldn’t make out his face, not clearly, but I was sure he was watching me. He stood motionless, hands buried in the pockets of an old gabardine coat. His hair was long, and straggling. I got the impression that, if the wind changed, I would smell him from here.

His appearance wasn’t unusual, of course: over the past two years the number of homeless in the town had increased quite markedly, with people being attracted down here by empty promises of work. We had our share of squatters, and people who slept in doorways; and related problems like alcoholism and addiction too. We certainly dealt with the members of this underclass in Casualty often enough – not least the late Messrs Kaufmann and Johnston. What really made me angry was the truth behind Karen’s black joke about human experimentation: the fact that people didn’t seem to give a damn.

I hoped that I did: I certainly felt the shortcomings of the society in which I lived so comfortably, and felt them keenly. But ideals are easy; the acid test is how you relate to the individual vagrant, and all his dirt.

He was beginning to make me nervous.

I looked away, back towards Jenny’s grave; then across to the other side of the cemetery, contemplating the view with a show of interest.

After a minute or two, I looked back. He was still there. He hadn’t moved at all.

When I looked away this time, it was to see if anyone else was nearby – and close enough to lend moral support, if need be. But this part of the cemetery was deserted. Of course there were one or two other people around, but they were occupied with their own grief: heedless for a time of the wider world’s concerns.

The atmosphere had gone: the peace was sullied. And though loath to break off my communion with Jenny, I suddenly felt a pressing urge to get away, well clear of this empty place, and back where there were people round me. Rising to my feet, I glanced his way again. No reaction. I turned my back on him, and started walking towards the gates, with a briskness of stride that I hoped was suggestive of irritation rather than flight.

I got about ten yards before giving in to the temptation to look behind me. I had to see if he was following.

He wasn’t. He’d disappeared.

I stopped, and glanced round quickly. No sign of him, which I found vaguely unsettling – although there was the odd clump of bushes around that could easily provide cover, and he might even have gone to ground amid the headstones. The fact that he was no longer there was hardly a reassurance; the reverse, if anything. It’s like when you discover a large spider lurking motionless in your bedroom (if you’re an arachnophobe like me, anyway): so long as you can see it, you know where you are; but then your attention wanders, and when you glance back at the wall, it’s not there any more, and you’ve no idea where it’s gone to. But it’s around somewhere: and you’ve got to sleep in here tonight.

I hastily resumed my walk towards the gates. Reaching them, I turned back one more time. But the graveyard was as empty and unthreatening as it had been when I arrived, and the tattered man was nowhere to be seen.

I kept on walking, thoughtfully: a bit uncomfortable with my reaction, now that he was gone. Knowing bloody well I’d reacted like that before – and would do so again.

Take that time the other week.

It had been something of a fraught night. With the clock unhurriedly edging towards midnight-thirty, the department already reeked of sour alcohol; there were people just wandering around. Patients, relatives, a stray policeman. There was shouting and laughter; voices drunkenly amplified. Someone had just puked on the floor in cubicle six. Kathy was keeping amazingly calm, considering.

Most of the noise stemmed from a bunch of off-duty squaddies waiting in reception while one of their mates got his hand stitched. They were all in scruffy civvies, but there was still a depressing uniformity in their cropped scalps and loud, livid faces. They were uniformly pissed, as well.

It had been hard enough to concentrate with just that row going on; we didn’t need chatting up as well. Eventually Mike (whom no one tried to chat up) managed to usher them out along with their patched-up friend, ignoring shouts of ‘you Mick poufter’ and similar valedictions. I’d caught Brenda’s eye, and we’d shared a heartfelt sigh of relief.

Mike came back, muttering something about the bloody IRA never being around when they were needed.

Five minutes later, there was a dog in the department.

Bren almost dropped the tetanus set she’d been preparing as the Alsatian stuck its nose around the utility room door before padding off down the corridor. I was trying to keep order in the cubicles, and turned at the sound of her surprised little gasp – looking in through the opposite doorway. I saw, swore, and went after it – but someone down at reception was already shouting ‘Carl! Heel!’, and the dog – it was an awfully big dog – was disappearing back in that direction even as I reached the main corridor. Determinedly I followed.

By the time I got there it was back with its owner, sitting at his feet as he stroked its dirty fur. The man was slouched in one of the chairs – they were mostly empty now – and looked me challengingly in the face as I came through. And I stared irritably back at him, taking in the state of his clothes – the patched, faded flak jacket; his stubble beard, and unwashed hair, drawn back into a ponytail. I guessed he was one of the Travellers.

We’d been having problems with the Travellers of late.

Or the hippies, as some called them; or gyppos, or worse. It seemed they came and went with the seasons; wandering in and pitching camp; being evicted and moving on. Quite a crowd had decided to winter in our town this time around; people were starting to complain.

‘Look, if you can’t keep that dog under control, you’ll have to leave,’ I told him, tightly.

He shrugged, didn’t reply. His eyes hadn’t left my face.

‘Can I help you?’ I went on: quite formally, but with no politeness at all.

‘You’re really welcoming tonight,’ he muttered.

‘We’re busy: have you got a problem or … ?’

I felt his gaze drop to my throat, and the crucifix I wore there.

‘You a Christian?’ he asked suddenly.

I blinked, and almost said None of your business; then nodded.

‘You could have fooled me,’ he said evenly.

That stung.

For a moment I was really tempted to say Well sod you, mate – even if not in so many words. I was in the wrong, and knew it, and buggered if I was going to admit it. So it took quite a struggle before I was able to draw breath, manage a smile, and murmur, ‘Sorry.’

He held up one hand, palm outward, revealing an oozing gash. ‘Did this on some barbed wire.’

I nodded. ‘Looks nasty.’ I picked up a casualty card from the front desk and came back. After a moment’s hesitation – I knew he’d noticed – I sat down beside him.

‘Don’t smell very nice, do I?’ he said drily, and glanced across.

I met his gaze. ‘You were right: it shouldn’t make any difference, should it?’

But it had, of course. And still I hadn’t bloody learned.

The Sunday bus service being what it is, I decided I’d walk at least part of the way home. I knew a few shortcuts, and it was still light enough to take them – though the sun was getting lower and colder all the while. From Milston Road I took the footbridge over the ringway, and on through the Stoneham Estate towards the town centre; scenting a foretaste of dusk frost on the air, along with the cooking smells of Sunday tea that wafted out from warm bright kitchens. I missed the bus at the corner of Clarke Street and had to cut across through Lamborn. That’s one of the older parts of town: a lot of the houses are empty, boarded up. But I was halfway down Stone Road before it dawned on me that yesterday’s murder had happened here – in one of these derelict buildings I was passing. The realization brought me up short.

I don’t think it was fear I felt, even though the shadows were lengthening on the street. Rather, it was a macabre curiosity. The news reports on last night’s TV had taken every opportunity to emphasize the gruesome nature of the killing: apparently the poor bloke had been cut to pieces. I tried to remember if they’d actually mentioned which of the empty houses the remains had been discovered in – number eighteen I decided, after a moment – and here it was just coming up on the left. I stopped again.

It was getting chilly. There was no one on the street. I knew I should be pushing on for home, not hanging around; especially when I was lingering in the fresh footsteps of a murderer. But the house exerted its own grim fascination. Two storeys high, with slates missing from the roof and windows blocked off with chipboard: one empty slum in half a terrace of them. I stood there before it, scanning its impassive façade; trying, almost despite myself, to visualize the darkened rooms within – and what had happened there.

And then the front door swung gratingly open, and I almost jumped out of my shoes.

A uniformed policeman, buttoned up in his anorak, appeared in the doorway. The surge of adrenaline had left me feeling sick and giddy, and I could only stand there getting my breath back as he eyed me with some disdain. Obviously he’d been detailed to keep the place secure until the forensics and scene-of-crime teams had finished; and to discourage the morbidly curious, like me. The cold must have driven him indoors from his exposed position on the front step; he’d probably been having a cup of tea in the back or something.

‘Would you mind moving on, miss? Nothing to see here.’

Actually it was Bill Roberts, who was regularly up at our department on some business or other: last week it had been an argumentative drunk. He hadn’t recognized me, and was putting on his most patronizing voice-of-authority tone. I couldn’t help smiling, in the circumstances.

After a moment, recognition dawned, and he relaxed, grinning apologetically. ‘Afternoon, Rachel – sorry, didn’t recognize you in civvies.’

I’d heard it suggested, rather unkindly, that he wouldn’t recognize a thief if the man walked past him wearing a mask and carrying a sack with SWAG written on it. But he was a decent enough bloke, when he wasn’t throwing his weight around, and I could at least try and find out what he knew.

‘They finished in there yet?’

He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Might have. Shit, but the guy was in a mess …’

‘So I heard.’

‘You haven’t heard the half of it.’ He paused then, clearly wondering whether he should say more. I raised my eyebrows in mild enquiry; and after a moment he decided that this was one professional to another, and continued.

‘You remember that RTA, beginning of November?’

I knew which road traffic accident he meant: I was still trying to forget it. I nodded.

‘Well this was worse.’

Must have been bad. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, interested.

‘Well, this guy had been all split open too – only not torn this time, but cut, all neat and clean. That’s what makes it worse, it was so cold-blooded: sort of clinical …’

Clinical. The word lodged and grew cold inside my head; I felt my stomach shift uneasily. My gaze strayed to the open doorway behind him – a gaping entrance into blackness. The blinded windows stared down at us, and were they really so unseeing? Abruptly I found myself struggling to suppress a shiver.

It must have shown in my face, for he looked at me quizzically. ‘Hey, you okay? Sorry, I thought you Casualty nurses were used to this sort of thing.’

Used to what? I thought dully; my skin still recalling the chill of Alison Scott’s cubicle. I could still see the fear in her fixed, dilated stare as well. And smell the sickly sweetness of her post-operative infection …

Cutting. Cold. Clinicians.

I grimaced, and glanced away.

The nearby streetlamp came on: sputtering pink that steadied to a deepening rosy glow. I looked at my watch, and was about to make my excuses when a car turned into the street and drove up to park at the kerb close by me. The man who got out wore plain clothes but was obviously another police officer, and this time it was he who recognized me first.

‘Hi, Sis – how are things?’

Joe Davies, indeed: I’d last seen him a couple of months back, when he was still in uniform. About the same age as his colleague (about the same age as me, come to that), he was cooler, sharper, with straight fair hair, and pale restless eyes behind designer specs. On the beat, he’d always been careless of the finer details of uniform dress: you could count on noticing a button undone here, a scuffed toecap there. Now he was plainclothes, this tendency had been allowed to develop further, so that, though he wore a suit, his shirt was unironed, and his tie hung slack beneath an open collar.

His question had been rhetorical: without waiting for an answer, he turned to Roberts. ‘All quiet?’

The PC grunted.

I gave Davies a quizzical look. ‘Thought I heard you were with the vice unit these days.’ He grinned. ‘You heard right.’

I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I nodded towards the house. ‘So?’

For a moment he was reticent, as Roberts had been before him. But I knew he’d come round. When it comes down to it, everyone trusts a nurse.

He shrugged. ‘It’ll be in the papers soon enough, I suppose. The dear departed was a pimp, and probably into drug pushing too. We’d been watching him for quite a while. Bit of a bastard, by all accounts.’

I felt a sudden warm tingle of relief go through me. After a moment my mind caught up, and realized why. ‘And you reckon this was just a sort of gangland thing – drug pushers falling out?’

Again he shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe it was more personal – he used to beat his girls up regular: I think you had one come in to you not long back, but she wouldn’t press charges. Maybe one of them had a big brother with a nasty temper …’

‘Very nasty,’ Roberts put in, with feeling.

‘Anyway,’ Davies continued, ignoring the comment, ‘we’ll probably know more once we get the results of the p-m. The official one, I mean.’

I hesitated. ‘There was an unofficial one?’

‘Yes. Oh yes.’ He gave me a chilling little smile. ‘It happened right upstairs. Every organ cut out of him, and not a knife-stroke out of place. The best pathologist in the business couldn’t have sliced him up better.’

‘Oh,’ I said faintly, and relief died like a candle in the cold.

Of course they would go on looking, for vicious drug dealers, or violent people pushed too far; but now I knew they’d be wasting their time. Something way beyond the imagination of your ordinary copper had come to this dark and mouldy house – and murdered once again.

Another drip against the stone. Cold water. Or colder blood …

And Davies, as he turned towards the house, couldn’t resist adding one final grisly detail. ‘When the Home Office guy did his preliminary examination up there in the bedroom, he reckoned there was a possibility the poor sod was still alive when whoever it was began cutting. Still alive, and still conscious …’

He nodded a farewell and went on into the dark doorway. Roberts smiled, half-apologetically. ‘I shouldn’t let it worry you too much, Rachel. Probably just dealers settling scores …’

‘I know: don’t have nightmares, right?’ I couldn’t help the edge of sarcasm in my voice, but he didn’t seem to notice.

‘All the same …’ He glanced up at the cold, colourless sky. ‘I’d be getting along if I was you. Soon be dark. Safe home, eh?’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ I watched him re-enter the house, closing the door behind him; then turned and continued along Stone Road. And though I was glad, very glad, to get to be able to put some distance between myself and number eighteen, having to turn my back on that grim, befouled place didn’t make me feel better at all.