Night Visit (11 page)

An
electronic buzzer sounded like an angry wasp as I stepped inside the shop. It wasn’t the best quality of places. The clocks were all Edwardian, the pictures prints rather than originals and the only decent piece of furniture was a reproduction mahogany desk. There was no sign of the picnic basket, it must have been sold. But the shop wasn’t empty of customers. There was a couple at the counter, well dressed, in his ‘n’ hers dark business suits. They were choosing some silver serviette rings. I listened to their prattle, glancing around the walls of the shop to look for the print. I couldn’t see it.

I
studied the walls, peered around the smaller back room. I still couldn’t see it. There was another room upstairs but here the walls were bare apart from a wall clock with an irregular tick like a damaged heart and a dreadful modern oil, splashes of oranges and blues. There was no title, I noticed, and it was unsigned. I wasn’t surprised.

When
I returned to the front counter the couple were still deliberating over the silver serviette rings and I began to get fidgety. Apart from Gordon’s Lane I had two other calls in the council estate. And I wanted to get home to Rosie. I had promised to take her and one of the few faithful old friends to the pictures this afternoon to see the new Steven Spielberg before visiting a pizza parlour. I didn’t want to let them down and I wasn’t sure how long I would be at Gordon’s Lane. At the same time I was painfully aware that the old guilt was surfacing again—almost her entire summer holidays were being spent farmed out with various friends. I had yet to ask Sylvie how she felt about spending the nights with Rosie on my nights on call. Maybe a foreign au pair was the answer. But for one child who was invariably at school?

‘
Excuse me.’ At last the shop keeper apologised to the frisky couple and turned her attention to me. ‘Can I help you?’ They were the traditional words, but rudely spoken. She must already have assessed me as a mean spender. I was horribly aware of the loose denim dress, years old, even more years out of fashion compared with her dress which had all the fancy trimmings of expensive, designer stuff.

‘
You had a print.’ I said. ‘Nineteen-twenties I would imagine.’

‘
Yes?’ I didn’t know whether the yes was a yes of comprehension or confirmation but she was looking blank so I enlarged. ‘It was of a child clasping a toadstool.’

Her
thickly lipsticked mouth gave a patronising smile as she fingered a label on the top pocket of her silk shirtwaister. ‘Lovely, wasn’t it,’ she cooed.

‘
I’d like to—’ I got no further.

‘
I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘it’s sold.’

‘
Sold?’

‘
Funny how things go,’ she said. ‘We’ve had it for ages and then two people want to buy it.’ Now I felt cheated. ‘Who bought it?’

My
abruptness won her respect. ‘A woman,’ she said nicely. ‘She came in yesterday morning and seemed to fall in love with it.’

Maybe
it was that phrase that made my senses tingle,
fall
in
love
with
it
.

It
alerted me. ‘What did she look like?’

Now
she was curious, very curious. ‘Quite well dressed,’ she said. ‘But I can’t tell you her name. She paid cash. It was only thirty pounds,’ she said. ‘It was just a print.’ Now she was wondering what all the fuss was about. Had she sold something and missed its value? ‘Was there something particular about the print?’

I
hesitated. The three of them were watching me, the antique-shop owner and the couple. I felt foolish. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I just liked it.’ Then the lie. ‘I thought it might look nice in my daughter’s bedroom.’

The
assistant, sensing a chance of a sale, swiftly consoled me. They often had prints of that era. They were never expensive. Some were even nicer than... Could she take my telephone number?

It
was all efficient sales talk but I didn’t want another print. I had wanted that one and someone had bought it first. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks. I’ll pop in again.’

Maybe
it was my imagination or my lying, guilty conscience. But I felt all their eyes on me as I tramped back to my car. I knew it was significant that the print had been bought.

All
the way back down to the car park I could visualise the picture in much more detail than I had thought I would have remembered. I had only viewed it at the back of the shop through a sunlit window. And yet I could picture every detail, the child’s face, pressed hard against the stem. Not smiling. Pleased but not smiling. Her eyes looked knowing, as though she was aware that this beautiful object was death. And yet she was not frightened. Her hands were chubby, clasped around the stem, her cheek pressed so hard it had been pushed forward to seem fatter than it was. The red and white cap had formed a spotted canopy over her so her face was shaded. And at her feet were flowers, daisies, buttercups, cowslips. Meadow flowers, like the ones Melanie would have trodden through as she walked towards her boundary. Flowers like the ones Rosie and I had picked as we had sauntered along Gordon’s Lane.

I
reached my car still saturated with thoughts. Ruth was right. Melanie could not have fallen or she would have been found. Dead children don’t bury their own bodies. They are found in tragic circumstances, at the bottom of a drop, or a well, fallen out of a tree, face down in a deep pond. Images came to me of deep, stagnant waters like the ones of the Heron Pool.

She
could not be there. She would have been found. Surely one of the first things they would have done would have been to have dragged those dark waters, or sent divers down.

Then
where? Kidnap seemed a more likely alternative but in real life these things do not happen. Children are found, ransoms paid. Sometimes bodies are not. I wondered whether Vera had come to this conclusion or whether she continued to hope.

But
if no one had been charged with the crime whoever had murdered Melanie was still free, somewhere, waiting.

I
did my two town calls quickly before heading south towards the forest and was soon crossing the causeway over the Heron Pool. The blaze of sudden sunshine was blindingly reflected in the stagnant water and on the edge, almost hidden in the reeds, I saw the long neck of nature’s best fisherman, a grey heron. Even as I watched he stabbed the water. When he straightened he was holding a wriggling fish in his beak. I took the left turn quickly followed by a sharp right.

Gordon
’s Lane looked different by daylight. The tall hedges were pretty. The verges splashed with wild flowers were just beginning to spot the green with colour; dandelions and daisies and tall cow parsley. A child would have loved to gather armfuls. They were a tempting sight.

As
I approached the tin but I realised it was not just the lane that looked different but the cottage too, rusting green, blending in with its background of trees and fields. This morning it wore its neglect quaintly. It reminded me of the gingerbread house of Hans Christian Andersen. But the gingerbread house had been inhabited by a witch. I pulled up in the concrete yard and noticed rampant climbers almost concealing the window panes. The place looked deserted.

I
stepped out of the car. Damp days had left mud scars in the yard. And they supported an ecosystem of their own, grass and Welsh Poppies, dandelions, nettles and docks. I locked my car and then wondered why I had done so. There was no one around to steal it. Maybe it was an automatic reaction to unease. Lock, protect, safeguard what is yours.

As
I approached the front door I realised what a secret, private place this was. The hedges had been left to reach their tallest state, making the entire approach a gloomy tunnel. The field beyond looked muddy and undrained. Too mushy for cattle. The trees made it dark. Neil had been right—Gordon’s Lane was a dead end. I could see a five-barred gate and beyond that a mud track that vanished into the trees.

I
knocked on the door and wondered if the house was empty. Surely not. The old lady was in no fit state to go anywhere. And I had said I would visit today. I knocked again and opened the door. The sitting room was empty. Calling I went straight to the bedroom.

She
shrieked when she saw me and tried to pull the covers over her face.

‘
It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m the doctor. I came last night. Remember?’

She
gave a reluctant shrug.

‘
I could do with examining you properly,’ I said in a falsely hearty tone. ‘It was late last night. I was a bit tired to do a thorough examination. Besides,’ I tried to make a joke out of it, ‘it’s quite dark in here. They do make electric bulbs brighter than forty watt.’ I took a step forward. ‘I need to be sure that you’re not hurt, Mrs Pritchard. Is that all right?’

She
was more concerned with the mention of the light bulbs than the physical examination. ‘Anthony doesn’t like me to waste electricity,’ she snapped.

I
drew back the threadbare curtains. ‘Well I can see OK today, anyway.’

For
a brief moment her face was so hostile I thought she would refuse to co-operate with me. She would have been within her rights. But her stare softened. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm.’

‘
I could do with your nightie off,’ I said. ‘I’ll help you.’

I
slipped it over her head. Skinny breasts, thin arms. Thin arms covered in bruises, all colours. Yellow, black, green blue. Old bruises, more recent bruises. ‘Grabbers,’ we call them. Bruises on the upper arm, as any child abuse specialist will tell you, are an indication of an arm that has been held too firmly. Grabbers. Like father like son. It isn’t only children who can be abused.

I
could have ignored the bruises. Instead I decided to draw attention to them. ‘Your son?’ I said, touching the marks.

She
didn’t even look frightened. She simply met my curiosity with calm acceptance tinged with puzzlement that I should take so much notice.

Her
pale eyes stared at me as I gave a cursory examination to the rest of her body. Apart from a nasty bruise on her left breast there was no more damage. Rough handling but no more. It was as I bent her forward to listen to her chest and examine her ribs and spine that the real clue came.

I
was sitting on the bed behind her, my stethoscope placed over the base of her right lung. She was staring at the corner where I had found her last night.

I
was learning now not to confront Amelia Pritchard full on. Instead I pretended to be percussing her spine. Surreptitiously I was following her gaze.

On
the floor, in the corner, deeply indented in the carpet, were four small evenly spaced marks. It took me a minute or two to work out what they were and Amelia was getting impatient.

‘
Haven’t you finished yet, doctor?’ she snapped. ‘I’m getting cold.’

I
slipped the nightie back down over the iron grey hair and glanced in the opposite corner. I knew what had made those marks. The commode must have stood there for a long time to have made them so deep. He had moved it. He had wanted her to fall. He had wanted me to come out here.

9

So I had gained a new image to disturb me. By the end of June the vulnerable old woman in the forest had joined Melanie Carnforth to haunt my dreams. But unlike Melanie, Amelia Pritchard was a real, flesh and blood person, one who, as my patient, had the right to summon me, any time. When my pager gave its insistent bleep I dreaded reading her name.

It
had occurred to me that Pritchard could make up any story at any time of the day or night to force me to visit his mother and I would have no excuse not to go. In a way it was worse that nothing had actually happened on the two occasions when I had been there. It meant that neither the police nor my partners would have any sympathy if I refused to attend. Neither would the Medical Defence Union back me up in the event of a complaint. So, perhaps stupidly, I kept my fears to myself and confided in no one. Like a coward I asked the Health Visitor to look in on Amelia Pritchard.

I
thought
that
would
be
enough
to
protect
her
.

So
I clung to my one consolation—Danny Small kept away from the surgery for the entire month of June and I was not defending my decision to refuse him methadone once or twice a week.

Pritchard
stayed silent. But in July he came back again ostensibly to have his blood pressure checked. He didn’t even mention his mother but while I pumped the sphygmomanometer cuff up I caught him watching me.

‘
Your blood pressure’s doing fine, Mr Pritchard.’ I unhooked the earpieces from my ears, laid the stethoscope across the desk, folded the cuff away.

He
said nothing but tugged his sleeve down. Summer and winter, Pritchard always wore the same clothes, a sweaty shirt, a moth-nibbled tie, a grubby jacket. In the months that I had been seeing him he had never varied this basic recipe. But however varied his colour schemes were they all looked as though they had been bought from charity shops. All were outdated fashions, well worn, overwashed, discarded. That morning he waited until he had fumbled his arms back into his jacket before saying what must have been on the tip of his tongue from the moment he had inched his way around the door. ‘I do a good job you know,’ he said, ‘looking after my mother. I do have a day job as well.’

It
did not cross my mind to ask him what his day job was. I imagined he would work at the back of a poky office, pen pushing, a danger to no one.

‘
I don’t know why you can’t acknowledge the fact that many sons would not take the care of their mother that I do.’

So
he expected a pat on the back?

‘
There isn’t any need for you to be sending the nurse in.’ He paused to take breath. ‘To check up on me. It isn’t necessary.’

So
that was what he wanted, a free hand to taunt the old lady. So why consult me at all? I watched him steadily.

‘
Why do you keep sending that nurse round all the time? We don’t need her.’

‘
Your mother is a frail old woman,’ I began. ‘But nurses don’t visit all the old ladies,’ he said. ‘Only my mother.’

‘
She had a fall.’

He
glared at me. ‘It was just the once,’ he said. ‘It was an accident. She wasn’t badly hurt.’ His pebble-lensed glasses fixed on me. His eyes were huge, distorted. ‘You were the one who examined her, Harriet. If she had been badly hurt surely you would have noticed?’

I
stiffened.

He
put his face right up close to mine. ‘She won’t fall again. So call off your nurse. I’ll mind my mother. And I’ll see you next month.’

I
knew I had to talk to someone or I would explode. I waylaid Neil in the car park the next morning.

‘
So what are you saying, Harriet? That he’s ill-treating the old lady?’ He actually laughed, his teeth startling white against a deep tan. ‘Granny bashing?’

‘
Yes, I think he...’

‘
She wasn’t complaining, was she?’

I
shook my head.

He
gave me a sharp look. ‘You’re sure this isn’t a case where your personal prejudices are coming to the fore?’

‘
What do you mean?’

‘
Well, Pritchard Junior does give you the creeps, doesn’t he?’

‘
Yes, but—’

‘
And I agree he sounds a strange character.’ I realised that neither Neil nor Duncan had ever met Anthony Pritchard—nor his mother.

It
was I who Pritchard had homed in on. ‘It’s more than that.’

‘
Is he coming in to see you again?’

‘
He will,’ I said grimly. ‘He’s decided his blood pressure needs monthly checks.’

‘
Then why don’t you warn him off?’

‘
You mean...’

‘
Nothing too heavy. Just tell him you’ll probably be checking up on his mother frequently and that part of that check is a physical examination.’

‘But
it isn’t,’ I objected.

‘
Pritchard won’t know that, will he?’ Neil thought for a moment. ‘You could get the Social Services involved but I really wouldn’t advise it.’ He scanned me thoughtfully as though assessing how amenable I was to his suggestions. ‘Look at it this way. There isn’t much to go on, is there? Old ladies bruise easily. And if you say she’s making no complaint and the Health Visitor hasn’t found anything wrong?’

‘
I know he moved the commode. I saw the marks.’ Even I hesitated to tell Neil that I had deduced that the commode had been moved purely to draw me out to the hut. So of course Neil viewed the incident from the other angle. ‘A very weak assault, Harry. Oh come on. And besides, now he knows you are alert, the old lady will probably be safe.’

It
was then that I began to realise how very clever Neil was. Almost in a legal fashion he had put the entire problem into perspective. Worse, I had to acknowledge that his was the voice of reason and I felt wrong footed for having unburdened my problem on to him—on his very first day back from his trip to Turkey. I tried to rectify matters self-consciously. ‘Was your holiday good?’

‘
Excellent,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely marvellous. I haven’t had such a good time in ages.’

‘
Where was it you went?’

‘
Istanbul.’ His eyes lit up. ‘What a place. The mosques, and the amazing sights.’ He grinned. ‘I even went to a belly dancer’s night club.’

‘
Oh.’ For some silly reason this confession embarrassed me. I had never thought of Neil in a sexual context. He was, simply, Neil. Friend, colleague, doctor.

It
was just one of my many mistakes in that year.

To
cover my confusion I added, ‘Lots of photos, I expect.’

‘
Absolutely. Lots. Not in the album yet though. And tell me. How’s my best girl?’

‘
Rosie’s missed you,’ I said. ‘She says I don’t play draughts with half as much... what was the word she used? Oh I know. Strategy.’ I tapped his shoulder playfully. ‘Now I wouldn’t have called draughts a game of strategy at all.’

He
burst out laughing. ‘You have to keep the youngsters occupied.’

‘
Well you seem to have done that,’ I said. ‘Look, why don’t you come round tomorrow? We’ll have a takeaway curry.’

His
eyes lit up. Maybe after the holiday returning to isolation seemed doubly lonely. For a fleeting moment I was angry with Petra—and with Sandy too. They should not have left him alone. He deserved better than this.

*

My first patient of the morning was Ruth, bearing a urine sample in a little plastic bottle which she triumphantly placed on my desk. ‘I’m sure it’s positive,’ she said. ‘Absolutely sure. I’ve missed a period. And my breasts feel like lead weights. Harry,’ she said delightedly, ‘I even feel sick in the mornings.’

‘
And luckily for you,’ I said, ‘I have a home pregnancy kit.’ I eyed the miniature Bells whisky bottle. ‘It is an early morning specimen, isn’t it?’

She
nodded and watched me fish the testing kit out of the drawer. ‘You know I feel Arthur should be here,’ she said, hands clasped together. ‘I’m so excited.’

I
opened the bottle, filled the dropper and put the requisite number of drops of urine on the reagent strip. Then it was just a matter of waiting. Only for a few seconds, less than a minute, but Ruth’s exuberance was infecting me. I badly wanted her to be pregnant. But I also wanted the baby to be normal. A swift glance at her face told me how very much this all meant to her. I found it almost threatening.

The
line turned blue and Ruth stared at me. ‘It’s positive,’ she whispered. ‘I am pregnant.’ And her hands crept over her stomach as though she was feeling for the baby.

I
laughed uneasily. ‘It’s nowhere near there yet, Ruth. It’s not even peeping over your symphysis pubis. Congratulations,’ I said heartily. ‘I don’t quite know how you’ve done it so quickly but you really are pregnant. These tests are very accurate.’ I glanced at my gestation disc. ‘By my calculations you should have an April baby, Ruth.’ But even then I felt obliged to add, ‘You know...’

‘
Don’t spoil my fun, Harry,’ she warned. ‘I know I’ll need tests and scans and more tests and more scans. And still, because of my age no one will believe me capable of bearing a normal child.’ There was a tinge of bitterness in both her words and her face. ‘And every time any one of those tests is done I’ll worry that they’ll find something and some nice professional like you will only do your job and persuade me...’ She put her hand on my arm, ‘oh ever so nicely, what the sensible thing to do is. But for now just let me enjoy it, please. Back off and let me be happy.’

Medicine
never allowed me to be one hundred per cent happy. And that made me let Ruth down. Instead of pure joy I had tempered it too much with caution. I was thoughtful throughout the entire morning.

I
was still thoughtful when Duncan walked in. I watched him carefully as he poured his coffee from the pot, and asked after his wife. ‘Duncan,’ I said, ‘How’s Fiona these days?’

He
drew in a long, deep breath. ‘Not good,’ he said.

‘
What’s the matter?’

He
leaned back in his chair. ‘She’s very lonely, missing Merryn,’ he said finally.

Merryn
was their daughter. ‘She isn’t at home anymore?’

‘
The nearest decent job she can get is Manchester. It’s fifty miles away. And with the on-call commitment she finds it difficult to get over and see us.’

‘
I’ll pop up and see Fiona,’ I promised.

His
face lit up. ‘Oh, that would be good. She’s fond of you.’ He paused. ‘No, wait. I’ve got a better idea. Harriet,’ he said. ‘It’s our wedding anniversary next week. Merryn’s promised to come over and cook us a meal. Why not come then?’

‘
What night? I’m on call...’

‘
Wednesday.’

‘
Hadn’t you better check with... ?’

‘
No,’ he said. ‘I know it will be all right. Please, come over on Wednesday.’

The
gesture both pleased and touched me. I really was fond of Duncan, Fiona and Merryn.

She
too was a doctor, at the moment training to be a GP.

*

Neil raised his eyebrows when I asked him to babysit.

We
were in my lounge, sprawled across the sofa. The takeaway curry had been eaten, the debris cleared straight into the dustbin, Rosie had won at draughts and been tucked up in bed and now we were finishing off the bottle of wine. In the background a classic CD was playing almost too quietly to hear. A lamp burned in the corner.

‘
So,’ Neil said, ‘Duncan’s decided to make peace with you.’

‘
We were never at war.’

‘
I think,’ he said smiling, ‘that Duncan took it as a sign of rampant feminism the way you threw Robin out.’

‘
That’s nonsense,’ I said uneasily. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’

‘
Tales abound,’ he was still smiling, ‘of a suitcase bursting open as it fell from a first-floor window?’

Now
I laughed too. ‘It seemed quicker than lugging it down the stairs,’ I said. ‘You know how Robin always loved clothes. It was heavy. What are you laughing at?’

‘
You,’ he said. ‘Do you know you’re changing?’

‘
In what way?’

‘
Less vulnerable,’ he said. ‘More detached, stronger. And I think you’ve been buying yourself some new clothes.’