The Darkest Goodbye (William Lorimer) (9 page)

S
arah Wilding fingered the name badge pinned on to her uniform. This was what she had missed. Being part of a caring profession, having a useful job to do… the sense of pride found in getting up in the morning and going to work had almost been euphoric this Wednesday morning. It had been easy to leave that miserable room in the bed and breakfast and head towards the train station, eager feet taking her along the city streets, umbrella held aloft to protect her new uniform. Even the long walk from Bearsden station, rain pattering down on her brolly, had failed to dampen Sarah’s spirits.

She was early, far too early, really, she told herself, nervously tapping out the key code on the front door pad. Silly to get here an hour before her shift began when she might have stopped in the station for a bite to eat. But the prices at the fast-food kiosks had spoiled her appetite; every penny had to be counted carefully if she were to make it to the end of this week. The train fares, toiletries and a pack of black tights had already made a considerable hole in her budget. One of the auxiliaries gave Sarah a tentative smile as she folded her umbrella and stepped into the warmth of the building. The nurses on night shift would still be with their patients. There was plenty of time for a cup of tea and a biscuit from the caddy in the staff lounge; that would do instead of breakfast. The landlady at her digs didn’t begin breakfasts till seven, far too late for Sarah when she had to be at work by eight.

The smell of bacon cooking wafted along the corridor as Sarah passed the kitchen, making her stomach rumble. Oh well, it was her own fault for coming in at such a ridiculous hour. Maybe if she could find different lodgings, somewhere with access to a kitchen, then this problem might be resolved. Was she allowed to leave the bed and breakfast, though? What would her social worker say? All these thoughts settled on her like a dark grey cloud as Sarah put her wet jacket on the back of a chair, moving it near the radiator to dry off.

‘You’re early!’

Sarah spun round with a gasp to see the nursing home manager standing with a tray of food in her hands.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,’ Nancy Livingstone laughed. ‘If I’d known you were coming in at this time I’d have…’ She broke off, looking at Sarah’s hungry expression as the new nurse eyed the bacon roll on Nancy’s plate.

‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the tray on to the table. ‘Eat up. Plenty more where that came from.’

Then, without another word, Nancy strode swiftly out of the staffroom, leaving Sarah with an unexpected breakfast.

She was almost finished making a pot of tea when Nancy returned, holding a plate piled high with more bacon rolls.

‘The girls on night shift like to have their breakfast before they leave,’ Nancy explained. ‘And, since I just live up the road, it’s easy enough for me to have mine here with them.’

Sarah licked her lips, tasting the salty bacon. ‘Thanks,’ she murmured. ‘I really appreciate this.’

‘You wouldn’t have had time for anything to eat yet, I suppose?’ Nancy asked shrewdly. ‘Maybe you should just have breakfast here with us?’

Then, to Sarah’s surprise, the older woman laid down the plate of food and, clasping her hands, bowed her head for a few moments.

‘Thank you, Lord, for providing for all our needs,’ she murmured, in a voice that seemed to speak to someone nearby, so that Sarah almost turned to see who else was in the room.

‘Here, have another one.’ Nancy offered the plate. ‘Cook does brilliant bacon butties. Best Ayrshire bacon. None of your supermarket stuff. Just milk with my tea, my dear,’ she added with a nod and a smile.

‘Oh. Right,’ Sarah said, rising to pour tea into two of the patterned mugs that she’d found hanging from a wooden mug tree. It was hard to know how to respond to this woman. Her kindness was palpable but the impromptu saying of Grace was unexpected to say the least.

They ate in companionable silence, Sarah relishing each bite of the food as her hunger was assuaged.

‘Do the other staff know…?’ she blurted out suddenly.

The nursing home manager smiled sweetly and shook her head. ‘It’s not their business to be told about that,’ she replied. ‘You could be an agency nurse for all they know.’

‘Oh.’ Sarah gave a sigh of relief.

‘Mrs Abbott was told, of course.’ Nancy smiled apologetically.

She’d expected that, Sarah told herself, yet there had been no sense of having been overly scrutinised by the owner of the nursing home. On the contrary, Mrs Abbott had been quite calm, as though dealing with an ex-con like Nurse Wilding happened to her every day.

‘And she didn’t mind?’

Nancy Livingstone laughed. ‘She knows me well enough to trust my judgement. Actually, she’s my sister,’

‘Your sister! Does that mean the nursing home is yours as well…?’

‘No.’ Nancy shook her head with a smile. ‘Bless you, no. It belongs to the Abbotts. I’m their right-hand woman, so to speak. Used to work in an accountancy firm until they asked me to help run this place.’

‘You didn’t mind changing careers?’

Nancy Livingstone gave her a strange smile. ‘It was something I was called to do,’ she said simply. ‘And perhaps the Good Lord brought you here too.’

Sarah shifted uncomfortably. This sort of talk was like the stuff that pastor used to spout back in Cornton. As if being incarcerated was part of a bigger plan!

‘I think I’m just lucky,’ she mumbled. Then, to her dismay, she felt a tear begin to trickle down her face. ‘Don’t deserve…’ She began to hiccough.

‘None of us deserves our good fortune,’ Nancy murmured.

‘But you don’t understand!’ Sarah protested, eyes full of guilty tears. ‘If you knew what I’d done you’d never have had me here to work!’

‘Oh, Sarah, don’t say that,’ Nancy replied. ‘Catherine told me enough to know that you were not completely to blame for what happened.’

‘He
died
!’ Sarah gulped. ‘How could I not be to blame for that?’

‘Here.’ Nancy handed her a box of tissues. ‘The girls will be coming in for their breakfast and you don’t want them to see you like this, do you?’

Sarah sniffed, taking a handful of tissues and blowing her nose. ‘I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be wasting your time with someone like me.’

‘Listen to me, Sarah,’ Nancy told her. ‘There’s a very important thing that the Bible says: all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That’s everyone, not just you. Think of that next time you want to beat yourself up, eh?’

Sarah nodded, struggling to contain the sudden rush of emotion that had taken her by surprise. Nancy was talking to her again, speaking in soothing tones.

‘What you’re doing here is very important, Sarah,’ she said. ‘You are well aware that each of our patients is in receipt of intensive nursing care. Many of them are stroke victims; you’ve seen that for yourself. One day their lives are going along a steady path then the next they’re lying half paralysed in a hospital bed, some of them so helpless that they require every sort of help with their bodily functions. That’s where you and all the other nursing staff come in.’ She smiled gently as Sarah wiped her eyes with the edge of a tissue.

‘But it’s not just about making them comfortable,’ Nancy continued. ‘They all have need of companionship, someone to take a real interest in them as individual human beings.’

‘I know,’ Sarah said softly. ‘Mrs Abbott said that every nurse was expected to provide a listening ear or else spend time chatting in a friendly way to the patients.’

‘She’ll have told you that we read to them.’ Nancy nodded to Sarah. ‘Newspapers or articles from journals that we know will be of interest. Things like
Farming Monthly
for Mr Imrie. He was a farmer before his stroke, you know. It’s hardest of all for the ones who have led an active, physical life, don’t you think?’

‘Thank you,’ Sarah whispered quietly.

‘Oh, my dear, don’t thank
me
.’ Nancy beamed. ‘Thank the Good Lord who sent you to us.’

Looking at this woman whose kindness had given her a second chance, Sarah made a decision. She would make something of this job, she nodded in determination. Maybe Nancy Livingstone’s words were right. Perhaps she was here for a reason. And not just for herself, a whole-bodied young woman, but for these poor souls who depended on her nursing them with loving care. It was a chance to turn her life around once more.

A shadow loomed over Kirsty’s desk and she looked up to see Murdoch’s taciturn face staring down at her. He was dressed in his pinstriped suit again yet if anything his closely shaven face seemed even wearier than it had the day before.

‘I need you to take me over to the South Glasgow University Hospital,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of the office door. ‘I…’ He hesitated for a moment and Kirsty thought she saw something bleak pass over his grey eyes. Then it was gone as he snapped at her, ‘Can you hurry up?’

The detective constable scurried down the stairs in Murdoch’s wake, conscious of trouble ahead.

Even as she drove along the motorway there was an ominous silence between them. What was going on? He’d not spoken a word since he’d commandeered her as his driver. A swift glance saw only the man’s profile, that bullet-shaped head and broken nose, a tough-looking face that seemed used to seeing the uglier side of human nature.

‘Park anywhere you can,’ Murdoch ordered as Kirsty slowed down to enter the parking area outside the huge new hospital that Glaswegians had nicknamed The Death Star due to its resemblance to the
Star Wars
feature. Then, to her surprise, he produced a blue disabled badge from his jacket pocket and laid it against the windscreen.

‘Come with me but don’t make a fuss,’ he said, turning suddenly to Kirsty. ‘I… never mind, just stay quiet,’ he finished with a sigh. Then he was out of the car and walking swiftly to the hospital entrance, Kirsty half running to keep up with him.

She followed her mentor through a maze of corridors, up several flights of stairs (why not take the lift? she wondered). Then at last Murdoch’s steps slowed as he pushed open a set of double doors and walked towards the nurses’ station.

‘Mr Murdoch,’ he announced quietly to a ginger-haired nurse who looked up at him enquiringly.

Kirsty saw the rush of sympathy in the woman’s face as she rose from her place behind the desk. ‘She’s not awake, I’m afraid,’ the nurse told them, including Kirsty in her glance. ‘Doubt if she’ll even know you are there,’ she added in her soft Highland accent, leading them along a corridor and into a small room that was shaded by soft green curtains drawn against the daylight.

Kirsty wanted to gasp at the sight that awaited them; the emaciated figure of a woman, her face partly covered in a Perspex mask, several tubes snaking in and out of her body. And that sighing sound as the bed moved up and down as though it and not the patient were breathing.

Murdoch said nothing but sat down heavily on to a plastic chair next to the bed and slipped his fingers over the wasted hand lying on top of the sheet.

‘Shall I leave you two with Mrs Murdoch for a while?’ the nurse asked.

‘Oh, I’ll wait outside,’ Kirsty replied hastily, the sudden realisation of what was happening making her feel a mixture of embarrassment and shyness. She had no business being here at all, she told herself, slipping out after the nurse and forcing herself not to look back at the man sitting by his wife’s side.

‘I… I’m just Detective Sergeant Murdoch’s driver,’ Kirsty explained once they were out of earshot. ‘I didn’t know…’

‘He didn’t tell you we’d called?’

Kirsty shook her head.

The nurse made a face. ‘Poor soul. Some men are like that. Can’t talk about it, can they?’

‘What’s…?’ Kirsty glanced behind her in the direction they had come from.

‘Mrs Murdoch? Oh, we don’t think she’s got long to go now. On a ventilator all night.’ The nurse sighed. ‘She’s peaceful enough. No pain. But her lungs aren’t going to last much longer. We called him as soon as we were sure,’ the nurse added in a tone of defensiveness.

‘He knew she was…?’

‘Oh, sure, we’ve been keeping in touch ever since he came in with her the night before last,’ the nurse insisted.

Kirsty nodded, remembering the dishevelled state of her mentor the previous day, the sudden change from a smart working suit to jeans and leather jacket. He must have come straight from the hospital.

‘Isn’t there any family?’

The nurse shook her head. ‘Couple of sons. Both overseas. Probably won’t come until there’s a funeral.’ The nurse’s eyebrows rose as if commenting on the unfairness of life in general. Then she patted Kirsty’s shoulder. ‘Look, why don’t you grab a coffee from the machine along in the day room? I’ll come and collect you when it’s time for him to leave. If you need me before that, just ask for Nurse Milligan, okay?’

Kirsty nodded and walked slowly along the corridor, blinking in the artificial light. How strange to be busy at work with Murdoch for two whole days and not to know what was going on in his personal life. Did that account for the grumpiness? The sarcastic manner? Suddenly she was willing to ignore the several instances of DS Murdoch’s overbearing manner in the face of his dying wife. And yet, try as she might, Kirsty still could not rid her mind of the image of the scene of crime manager stooping over that tray of watches.

It was barely twenty minutes later that the ginger-haired nurse came and sat beside Kirsty, a mug of coffee clutched in both hands as though to warm her fingers.

‘I’ve got a wee break,’ Nurse Milligan explained. ‘Thought you might like a bit of company.’ She shot Kirsty a sympathetic smile. ‘She’s still here. But, like I said, she won’t regain consciousness.’

‘This ward, is it for terminally ill patients like Mrs Murdoch?’

‘Aye.’ The woman made a face. ‘We’re not MacMillan nurses but we all have specialist training in palliative care. There’s a higher ratio of nurses to patients up here than anywhere else in the hospital. It’s sad, really. We don’t get to know our patients for very long. Most of them are transfers from other wards. Like the one who passed away during the night, God rest her soul. Next room to Irene Murdoch,’ she said with a frown. ‘It was funny. One minute she was okay then the next…’ The nurse shrugged and shook her head.