Donor (12 page)

‘That’s broadly true,’ agreed Dunbar.

Ingrid appeared to have difficulty in controlling her impulses which Dunbar, reading her body language, guessed were to throw her hands in the air, shake her head and shout, ‘Then why in God’s name do you want to know anything as irrelevant as that?’ Instead she said, ‘I suppose we thought that a profit of seventeen thousand pounds for a ten-day stay would be enough to satisfy you without itemizing the patient’s treatment.’

Dunbar mutely agreed that this was the case. He wondered for a moment just how far he should press this point. On the one hand, he wanted to establish that he had the right to ask for any information he wanted. On the other, he didn’t want to push his credentials as the village idiot when all he was doing was thinking up things to keep Ingrid busy. ‘It doesn’t even say what the patient was in here for,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ingrid. ‘It’s this confidentiality thing we have. I suppose we thought you’d be happy with the final income figures. If it’s any help, I can tell you that this particular Omega patient had a baby here. It was feared that there might be complications but in the end everything was fine. In fact, if I remember rightly, all three Omega patients we’ve had were in for obstetrics care. Very rich men are always anxious that their wives have the best of care during pregnancy when problems are thought possible. Would you still like me to organize an itemized costing of their stay?’

Dunbar shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.’

‘Is there anything else I can help with?’

‘Not for the moment,’ smiled Dunbar. ‘I’m going to take the afternoon off, see the delights of Glasgow.’

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ said Ingrid.

Why was a sneer considered by so many to be the basis of sophistication? he wondered idly as he watched the door close.

He set off for Helensburgh just after one o’clock after checking the route in the AA road maps thoughtfully provided with the car. It seemed straightforward enough, just a matter of following the northern shore of the Clyde down to where Helensburgh sat at the foot of the Gare Loch. As he drove along the Clydebank expressway and out along the Dumbarton Road he passed the turn-off to Lisa Fairfax’s place. He couldn’t help but think of her sitting there in the flat with her demented mother. It made him reflect on how people’s lives could be ruined by notions of filial duty.

The sun was shining when he drove into Helensburgh and parked down by the sea front. The matron of The Beeches had told him to follow the signs directing tourists to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s famous Hill House; the hospice was located in Harlaw Road, the street running parallel to and a little behind Hill House, but he had time in hand so he decided to stretch his legs first and also find something to eat. He had given lunch a miss in Glasgow because he hadn’t been sure how long the journey down would take him. In the event it had taken under an hour. He watched the waves for a bit until the wind chilled him, then he went in search of a bar or cafe. He found an outlet of the Pierre Victoire chain, where he had a mushroom omelette and a glass of wine. He followed this with two cups of good coffee and a consideration of what he was going to ask Sheila Barnes – if, indeed, she was in any position to answer.

The Beeches was a large, stone-built Victorian villa with ivy clinging to its walls on the two sides Dunbar could see as he approached. In another setting it might have been forbidding but here, above the town and with views over the water, it seemed pleasantly neutral in the pale yellow, wintery afternoon sunshine. Dunbar rang the bell, and was led along to the matron’s office by a woman orderly dressed in a pink uniform and thick brown stockings. Her shoulders sloped dramatically from left to right. As he followed her he had to fight a conscious urge to emulate her posture. He was very aware of the warmth of the building and suspected that they must keep the heating full on.

‘Dr Dunbar, please come in,’ said a pleasant woman in her late forties in response to the orderly’s announcement of his arrival. She had prematurely white hair, suggesting that she had been blonde in her youth, and wore the kind of professional half-smile affected by senior nursing staff to put strangers at their ease.

‘Mrs Barnes is awake, although I have to say that she couldn’t recall you when I told her you were coming.’ The smile didn’t waver but her eyes asked the question.

Dunbar felt a pang of guilt. ‘It’s been a very long time, Matron. Many years.’

‘Well, I’m sure it’ll all come back to her when she sees you, and you can have a nice chat. We like old friends to call, and Sheila doesn’t have much longer to go, I’m afraid.’

‘Is she comfortable?’ asked Dunbar.

‘She has her moments of discomfort, but on the whole we’ve got her pain under control. You may find her a little sleepy. She’s on morphine.’

‘Someone told me her husband has cancer too,’ said Dunbar.

‘It’s true, I’m afraid. They both contracted it at almost exactly the same time. Very strange. I can’t ever recall that happening before. Cyril has the room next door to Sheila. Would you like to see him too?’

Dunbar shook his head and said, ‘I never knew Cyril.’

‘I’ll have Morag take you up now.’

The orderly was summoned back and she led Dunbar along the carpeted corridor and up the stairs to a pleasant bay-windowed room on the first floor.

‘Mrs Barnes, your visitor is here,’ said the orderly as she entered. Dunbar entered and the orderly backed out and closed the door. He approached the bed, where a painfully thin woman lay. Dunbar knew her to be forty-seven, but she looked twenty years older. Her face was etched with pain lines and her eyes seemed unnaturally large because of the hollowing of her cheeks.

‘Mrs Barnes, I’m Steven Dunbar.’

‘I don’t know you,’ said Sheila Barnes in a voice that didn’t rise above a whisper.

‘No, I’m afraid you don’t,’ he agreed, ‘but I had to ask you about an allegation you made while you were a nursing sister at the Médic Ecosse Hospital.’

Sheila Barnes gave the tiniest snort of derision. ‘After all this time?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, but something happened recently that makes these questions necessary. You maintained that a patient had been given the wrong organ in a transplant operation. Is that right?’

‘There was no other explanation.’

‘Was it a patient you were particularly fond of?’ asked Dunbar.

Sheila Barnes shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was a little shit, as I remember. Why are you asking me this now?’

Dunbar saw no point in telling her anything but the truth. He said, ‘Because another nurse working there has made exactly the same allegation.’

Dunbar imagined he saw a sharpness appear in the big eyes. ‘Has she now?’ she said thoughtfully.

‘A staff nurse in the transplant unit.’

‘Did anyone listen to her?’

‘She was dismissed.’

Sheila Barnes frowned and said, ‘What are they doing in that place?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ said Dunbar. ‘I’d like you to tell me all you remember about your patient.’

Sheila Barnes rested her head back on the pillow and let out a long sigh. She looked up at the ceiling in silence for a moment, then said, ‘I can do better than that. Get my handbag. It’s over there on the chest of drawers.’

Dunbar did as he was bid.

‘You’ll find a set of keys in the front.’

Dunbar found the keys.

‘They’re the keys to our house in Glasgow. I wrote everything down at the time. You may find that more useful than the suspect memory of a sick woman. Go there. Cyril and I won’t be coming home. It’s a black notebook. You’ll find it in the right-hand dressing-table drawer in our bedroom.’ She gave Dunbar the address.

‘If that’s what you want.’

Sheila Barnes fell back on her pillows again as if exhausted. ‘One mix-up is possible, but two …?’ she said distantly.

SEVEN

Dunbar looked back at The Beeches as he closed the gate behind him. The meeting had seemed strange but that was often the way with people who were very ill and under heavy analgesia. They had an air of detachment about them which suggested wooziness but they often still retained a clarity of thought that was as sharp as a razor and could take you by surprise. Despite the travails of her illness, Sheila Barnes had struck him as an intelligent, down-to-earth woman and, like Lisa Fairfax, not at all the type given to hysterical outbursts. Another nail in the coffin of the ‘neurotic nurse’ theory.

But, he wondered as he got back into the car, did that help? As far as he could see, eliminating one possibility left two others. Either both nurses had been mistaken in their conclusions or – the least attractive scenario of all – both were right and if that were the case … God knows where that was going to lead him. He decided he would go round to the Barneses’ house that evening and pick up Sheila’s journal. Maybe that would help him get a better feel for what had really gone on at the time.

Sheila and Cyril Barnes had lived in a neat, tidy, white-painted bungalow in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden. It was in darkness when Dunbar arrived but a security light clicked on and illuminated the path as he approached the front door, keys in hand. The curtains of the neighbouring house to the left moved and a man looked out. Dunbar ignored him and concentrated on opening the door; it was well secured.

When he stepped cautiously inside, fearing a burglar alarm he had not been warned about, he paused in the darkness for a moment before running his palm down the wall to find the light switch. The place smelt musty, but he supposed it had been empty for some time now and the windows, of course, had been kept closed. Feeling very much like an intruder, he walked slowly through the hall and found the living room. The silence and emptiness were almost tangible as he clicked on the light.

It was a comfortable room with a cottage-style suite covered in light-coloured floral material positioned round a stone fireplace and various small tables handy for receiving cups and saucers. A large television set sat silently gathering dust in an alcove by the window. Photographs occupied most of the flat surfaces and souvenirs from past holidays sat easily with them. From these Dunbar deduced that the Barneses had one son. A wedding photograph of Sheila and her husband took pride of place on the writing bureau, a graduation photograph on the mantelshelf. It was old, so Dunbar assumed the man was Cyril.

He went in search of the main bedroom and found the dressing table where he’d been told he’d find the journal. It looked solid – a family heirloom perhaps. The tall mirrors had a number of chips round their edges, a legacy of many removals, he guessed. The make-up items lying on a coloured glass tray struck him as poignant as he thought of Sheila’s gaunt, pain-lined face. He opened the drawer and found the book where she had said it would be.

He had just sat down back in the living room to read it when the doorbell rang. It seemed uncommonly loud in the silence and made him jump. He answered it and found a short man with ginger hair and a moustache standing there. He was wearing a check shirt under a yellow cardigan, and brown flannels pulled well up over his midriff so that the belt nestled just below his chest. On his feet were sheepskin slippers, the kind you bought from craft centres on bus trips, and he was carrying a cardboard box.

‘Yes?’

‘Good evening. My name’s Proudfoot,’ said the stranger. ‘I live next door.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I saw you arrive. I was wondering if there was any news of Cyril and Sheila?’

‘They’re very ill,’ replied Dunbar, suspecting that the man was really checking up on him. ‘Sheila asked me to pick something up for her.’

‘I see,’ said Proudfoot uncertainly. ‘Are you a relative, might I ask?’

‘No.’

‘I see, then that makes things a bit difficult …’

‘What’s on your mind, Mr Proudfoot?’ asked Dunbar. The man obviously wanted something more than information.

‘Actually, it’s my camera,’ said Proudfoot with some embarrassment.

‘Your camera?’

‘I hate being petty at a time like this, but Cyril was using my camera. His own was being repaired but it’s back now. In fact, I’ve got it here. The postman brought it this morning.’ He held up the cardboard box. ‘I rather hoped I might have mine back.’

‘I see,’ said Dunbar. ‘Why don’t you come in? I’m sure Cyril wouldn’t mind in the circumstances.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Proudfoot, immediately relaxing and stepping inside.

‘Do you know where it is?’ asked Dunbar.

‘Oh yes. Cyril keeps his photographic equipment in this little cupboard here.’

Proudfoot bent down and pulled open a small cupboard door to the left of the hearth. ‘Here it is,’ he announced, pulling out a leather camera case. ‘I’ll just put his back, though I don’t know what he’s going to say when he hears they didn’t find anything wrong with it. He’s been having problems with spoilt film. Three have come back completely fogged. It’s been driving him up the wall.’

‘Probably a defective batch.’

‘I think he tried more than one,’ said Proudfoot.

‘You’re both keen photographers, then?’

‘It’s our hobby. Birds mainly, but Cyril liked atmospheric stuff too, you know, derelict cranes in the old shipyards along the river, girders against the sky, twilight of an industry, that sort of thing. Maybe it had something to do with his illness,
sic transit gloria
mundi
and all that.’

Dunbar nodded.

‘We’re planning a trip down the Clyde to Arran in the spring.’

‘Sounds nice,’ said Dunbar, but somehow he didn’t think Cyril would be going.

Dunbar decided to take Sheila Barnes’s journal back to the hotel. That way he could photocopy anything he thought relevant, and return the journal later in the week. He stopped on the way and bought a bottle of gin and a litre of tonic water. He had no wish to go out or to spend the remainder of the evening in the shallow fraternity of the hotel bar, but he did need something to take the edge off the day.