‘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.
After a long shower, he wrapped himself in a dark-blue towelling robe and poured himself a drink. He placed it on the bedside table while he got comfortable on the bed and opened Sheila Barnes’s journal. He had assumed that it would be a personal diary in which she mentioned the patient at the centre of her allegations but it proved to be much more comprehensive than that. She had kept notes about the progress of all the transplant patients she
