The Betrayal of Trust (23 page)

The man had a glass vial in his
hand and read out something in German to the girl. She took the vial. Read the label.

‘
Ja
.’

A second vial.

‘
Ja
.’

The two vials were on the worktop together.

The girl bent and opened the cupboard beneath the sink. Stood up again with a pack of small plastic beakers and slit the wrapping. Took one out.

Beside her, Penny seemed to be frozen. Her hands did not move, but were folded on her bag,
white. Her face was stiff and without expression, but when Jocelyn glanced, she saw that her daughter’s eyes had sunk inwards, and the hollows beneath them were deep.

For a second time stopped. Everything in the room stopped. There was a streak of sunlight on the far wall, like a patch of child’s paint. The air was dense and thick so that she could hardly force it into her lungs. There was no
sound. The two
figures
at the worktop were waxen and neither moved nor breathed.

Time stopped.

‘Mrs Forbes.’

The young woman. Short hair. Fair hair. Pale green tabard. It shone faintly. Polyester then. Not crisp cotton. Jeans. And plastic clogs. Terrible acid-pink plastic clogs.

‘If you will stand now please?’ She held out a hand. Long fingers. Bony fingers. One ring. ‘And take off your coat.’

Penny was still frozen.

For a second, Jocelyn had an image in her mind again, of the quiet room. The sunlight filtering through half-drawn curtains. A candle flickering, sending a slightly moving shadow onto the wall. The blonde-wood table. Cross. Bed. White pillows. White sheet. White coverlet. Music perhaps. Tranquil music. She had thought of bringing a CD of her own. It had been mentioned
in the literature.

Music to die to.

The image flickered too and before it faded completely she had a surge of longing for it, longing to lie down on the white sheets and rest her head on the soft pillows. Look at the cross. Look at the candle. Look at the light sifting through the cotton curtains. Look at Penny, sitting quietly beside her. Penny holding her hand. Penny smiling.

‘Mrs Forbes.’

The light went out and the room in her head was in darkness.

Jocelyn stood. The girl was still holding out her hand. The thin hand. Pale skin. One ring.

Jocelyn took a step back from the hand. The edge of the chair pressed against her. She looked round. The man had come to life. He had a bar of Swiss chocolate in his hand and was breaking off a section. Snap.

Hands.

‘No,’ Jocelyn said.

‘
I DON’T HAVE
good news,’ John Lowther said. ‘The director, the medical officer and I have gone through everything. We have tried to identify any hidden reserves we can free up. There are none. Savings? We’re still in the process of identifying any more we can possibly make but frankly it’s unlikely. Everything has been cut to the bone and beyond the bone. A couple of support staff
have taken redundancy, one nurse is leaving and not being replaced. another is due to retire next month. We can’t lose any more without compromising patient care and even endangering patient safety, which obviously we would never do. We have no other option. We have to close C ward – that is eight beds – and mothball it for an indefinite time. If we do that we can keep going, just about, for another
three or four months, without an absolute financial crisis. The bank is being relatively accommodating – which in these days is quite something, you’ll agree. The PCT is not. They have no more money for us and they cannot bring any forward. Indeed, they’ve told us informally that we’re likely to have our support from them cut by 40 to 50 per cent next year. Cat drew in her breath and John Lowther
nodded. ‘I can’t argue with your reaction,’ he said. ‘Other than that, we’re cutting the opening hours of the day care centre. Looking at either two full or three half-days.’

‘That’s completely inadequate,’ Cat said. ‘Given the health and safety and staffing level limits on numbers already, we can’t cater for much more than half the patients who would benefit
from
day care, which in itself saves
us money. Quite a few people we manage to treat by a combo of day care and home nursing would have to become inpatients. Oh, for heaven’s sake, what are we doing here? Limping along. This isn’t anywhere near a proper hospice facility.’

‘I know.’ John Lowther sighed.

‘I’m sorry, John.’

‘Please.’ He raised a hand. ‘Feel free to vent your feelings in here. I am as angry as you are. I hope none
of us ever has to hold back what we really think and feel, around this table at least. But, let’s look at something a little more hopeful. Leo Fison has begun his task. I am not going to speak for him but I feel a bit more optimistic about our finances now he’s in charge of raising some emergency funds. Leo.’

Cat had had a patient with alopecia a few months earlier, a man in his thirties who
had been desperate to have a wig rather than show himself to the world entirely bald. Cat had tried to persuade him that many men now chose to shave their heads, that it was fashionable.

‘Bouncers and criminals,’ he had said. ‘I don’t care what it costs. I’m not demeaning myself by being a bald man before my time.’

She had wanted to mention the number of women, young women, sometimes beautiful,
who had become bald after chemotherapy and who had refused to hide behind wigs. But she had kept her mouth shut.

Now she looked at Leo Fison and wished she could have introduced him to her patient. He did not have a hair on his head and yet he was handsome, strikingly so. Some women would even find him sexy. She did not, but only because she had found no man sexually attractive since Chris, and
doubted if she would ever do so again.

There were five of them round the table – several trustees had sent apologies this time. Meetings were not usually so frequent and they were busy people.

‘I have to begin by stating the obvious,’ Leo Fison said. He had a good voice, a clear, warm tone. He inspired immediate confidence, Cat thought, and if he was asking for money that
was
an invaluable asset.
‘At the moment there are far too many good causes chasing a shrinking amount of charitable money. Everyone has cut back and these are straitened times. You know that but it bears repeating because I don’t feel I can be as bold as I might have been a few years ago. But that isn’t going to deter me. One of the avenues which has closed up is the business one – corporate giving. Firms simply do
not have the spare cash. Those local businesses which already support Imogen House very generously are looking at the amount they donate and finding they may have to reduce this. One firm which was a principal supporter – Jameson Studley Hines – has gone into receivership, another – Cole Brothers – has said it can’t give us anything for the next year though they are adamant that this is a temporary
situation. I have approached a few businesses which for one reason or another have never given to us, so far without success. They already donate to other local causes and they can’t take on anything else. One spot of sunshine, however. A large, upmarket insurance firm, Hinchley, have relocated to this area. I had lunch with their CEO who is Mr Hinchley himself, Michael Hinchley – his father founded
the company and he now heads it up. They are going to give us thirty thousand a year for the next five years, and he also said that he would make that fifty thousand for this year only, to help us out of our present crisis.’ He glanced across at Lowther. ‘I kept that one back from you, John. I thought I’d bring at least one nice surprise to the table.’

John Lowther’s face, permanently creased
into sadness now, lit up with a quick smile. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Good news.’

‘In addition – and I’ve got the list of names here, a copy for each of you – I’ve extracted another forty thousand, almost forty anyway, from here and there. A couple of trusts, someone I was at Cambridge with who’s made a fortune from biotechnology, that sort of thing. So we have all but ninety thousand in the bank,
though we need a good deal more, as you know. It’s a very small start … but at least I don’t come to the table empty-handed. I have one or two other notes but perhaps you might want to say something at this point?’

One by one ideas were thrown into the ring and thrown out again.

Leo asked how many volunteers the hospice had.

‘It’s an ever-changing number but we can count on a core of about
twenty-five to thirty people who are generally available and then maybe a dozen more who sometimes help out, depending on circumstances.’

‘So approximately thirty people we can call regular, committed volunteers?’

‘Yes, I think that’s fair.’

‘Then rather than going down the bazaar and coffee-morning route, the sponsored this and that – which takes up a lot of time and not always for a huge
reward – suppose we have a meeting with the volunteers and ask if they would each be willing to try and raise a thousand pounds, in a limited time frame. Two months … three? Do it any way they like – whatever they want to organise. Is that an impossible challenge?’

‘Not at all, I’d have said.’

‘Some might struggle.’

‘Yes, but some would raise more so it would even out.’

‘That would be another
thirty thousand.’

Leo straightened his papers together. ‘I think we must try. I’m going to London with John next week to see a few people. We have to knock on every door, frankly. No choice.’

On the way out, Cat caught up with John Lowther. ‘We need to talk.’

‘About having to close C ward. Yes.’

‘You announced it without consulting me.’

‘I know. I did mean to phone you yesterday, but I got
caught up in other things.’

‘We’ve four patients in C ward now.’

‘I don’t propose throwing them out on the street, Cat, you know that.’

She was angry, extremely angry. There had to be another way. She should have been asked, consulted, her opinions heard.

‘I feel as if I’m incidental to everything,’ she said, knowing that she sounded petulant and hating herself for it. She had been feeling
tired and stressed for weeks, irritable with the children, short-fused at the surgery. Furious with Simon, way beyond
what
he deserved simply for failing to turn up for supper and forgetting to let her know.

‘I’m sorry, John, that was petty of me. Of course you had to say something. And it makes sense to try and make one major saving. Close C ward and we give ourselves room to manoeuvre for a
while … Or we could simply close the day care unit altogether for the time being.’

They had reached the reception area. A couple were sitting together, holding hands. Two women were talking to one of the nurses. The phone was ringing. They went on down the corridor to Cat’s tiny office. The phone was ringing there too. She took the call quickly, made a couple of notes.

‘That would save on staffing,
equipment, running costs – they’re pretty high in the unit, you know. I’d hate to be without it, but it would mean the staff weren’t so stretched, we could absorb the loss of two nurses better. Therapeutically, psychologically, practically, the day care unit is invaluable but it isn’t indispensable. It’s an extra for us. I still feel our expertise is in the wards. Pain control, the best nursing
for terminal patients, the best possible palliative care. I’m still not fully convinced about hospice at home – I think we do better in-house, frankly. And the day unit could be regarded as icing on the cake.’

‘How much would we save?’

‘I‘d have to ask Clive. He’s the financial whizz, not me.’

‘I meant to ask, what do you think of Leo?’

‘I like him. He’s got down to things, he’s understood
the urgency. I’m impressed. I’m glad you could persuade him, John. I went out to see his nursing home by the way, though it hadn’t quite opened its doors then. I was impressed by that too. Leo Fison seems to be a good thing all round.’

John Lowther smiled. A sad smile, Cat thought. The smile of a man who has all but forgotten how a smile is done.

‘Listen, John – what about you? How are you coping?’

The smile shrank back into the shadows and hollows of his face.

‘It drags on. They have this television business tomorrow.’

‘Yes. Will you go?’

‘Oh no. No. I do wonder what use it can be at this distance,
you
know. I hope this isn’t just being made for – for voyeurs, for cheap thrills. I couldn’t bear that.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t. My brother wouldn’t have authorised it if he hadn’t thought it
was worthwhile.’

‘I dare say you’re right. Let me know when Clive has done his sums, would you? Then we can make a decision.’

‘Yes, I will,’ Cat said. ‘Thank you, John. Thank you as ever.’

He raised his arm as he walked away.

THERE HAD BEEN
hundreds of phone calls to the police hotline immediately after the disappearance of Harriet Lowther. Computers had been in their infancy but most of the calls had been logged electronically, though some had been taken down by hand and put onto index cards, which were later entered into the database. Simon had asked for those that had been flagged up as containing material
of use. Within them were a few which were marked with red asterisks. It was early evening, the station was quietening down, and he was going through them one by one. Somewhere, in here, he thought, sitting up and stretching his back and rolling his shoulders, somewhere might be the one vital nugget of gold. Might be. But probably wasn’t.

There were two separate murder inquiries, he had stressed
in a conference earlier – though ‘conference’ was giving a grand name to a meeting of three people. Cold cases were not a priority. Last week a driver had mounted the pavement in a 4 x 4, hitting a mother and her child in a buggy, and killing them both, before reversing, knocking over a man and leaving him with injuries from which he died, then fleeing the scene.

The following day, a house on
the outskirts of Lafferton had been entered in the middle of the night, the elderly occupants bound, gagged and beaten, and a large quantity of antiques and jewellery stolen. The woman had subsequently died and her husband was in intensive care. It had been a thoroughly professional job, there were no fingerprints, no footprints and the
burglar
alarm system had been disabled, probably a couple
of days before, by a man with an apparently bona fide ID coming to do an inspection after the ‘reporting of a fault’.