The Stone Gallows (17 page)

‘She's just concerned. Anybody can make a mistake like that.'

He stood up and started to walk from one end of the room to the other, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘The expense account won't stand for us following him to London, so it does limit our options, at least for the next couple of days. But there's plenty of other things we can do.'

I mentally raised an eyebrow. By ‘we', I rather suspected he meant me. ‘So, what are we going to do?'

‘The husband is supposedly away for the next few days on business? Any thoughts about that?'

‘Yeah. Where's the sister in all this?'

‘Exactly. The business trip is, after all, a classic. How many men have used it as an excuse to set up an away game with their secretary?'

His constant pacing was beginning to irritate. I resisted the urge to tell him to sit back down. ‘Let's look at it like this. There's three potential scenarios. Ian Sloan might be telling the truth, in which case he really is in London. Or, he could be telling the truth, but the sister could be there as well, and it could be a mixture of business and pleasure. Finally, he's not at a conference, he's not in London, and as usual, the wife really is the last to know.'

‘You forgot the secret mystery option. He could be at the conference, without the sister, but is secretly prowling the streets of Soho in search of hookers, rent boys or other creatures of the night.'

‘There is that, yeah. I mean, if he can be unfaithful to his wife, then he could definitely be unfaithful to his mistress.'

I remembered an opinion poll I had once heard on the radio.

Seventy percent of men who were questioned confirmed that they would sleep with Claudia Schiffer if it was guaranteed their wife or girlfriend would never find out about it. Fifty percent of women would sleep with Brad Pitt. Perhaps the concept of monogamy is similar to the idea of International Waters: the second you get more than twenty miles from your significant other then all bets are off.

The conference story was easy enough to prove. I said, ‘Did Sophie have any information? Where the conference was, what hotel he was staying at?'

‘She told me that the conference is at the Millennium Dome,' Joe said. ‘I phoned the event organisers, and they confirmed that a place – for one – had been booked in the name of Ian Sloan. I threw the name of Maureen Black at them, but they had never heard of her.' He checked a piece of notepaper that lay on his desk. ‘He's staying at a Traveller's Lodge in Knightsbridge. One single room. And again, there's no reciprocal booking for a Maureen Black.'

‘Traveller's Lodge. How nice for him.' My knowledge of London's geography was poor, but I seemed to remember that Knightsbridge was only a brief kerb crawl from Soho. ‘What's the conference about?'

‘ “Committing to the Future: Anticipating the Needs of an Ageing Population.” '

I repeated it aloud. ‘That's a hell of a mouthful. Why don't they just call it “The Annual Granny Farming Conference”?'

‘It's probably against EU regulations. You know, because if they refer to themselves as farmers, then we would have to institute a cull at the age of sixty-five or something because Great Britain produces too many elderly people and it destabilises the economy of Lithuania or something.'

‘And that would be just a tragedy.' I said. ‘Joe, I'm not sure Lithuania's in the EU. Hell, I'm not sure it's even in Europe. Or that it's even a country. It's probably a state of Russia or something. Some mad little dictator's holiday warzone.'

He laughed, then his face turned serious.‘What did you think of her?'

‘Sophie Sloan?' I took a little time to formulate an answer. ‘She's very. . . intense? Is that the word I want?'

‘It's
a
word, that's for sure. Something about her bothers me. You know how you brought the pair of us coffee yesterday morning, then you had to go and take that phone call?'

I nodded.

‘She popped a pill with her coffee. Told me it was an anti-depressant.'

‘You think maybe it was something else?'

‘Damned if I know. I read an article the other day that said that Prozac was the most commonly prescribed drug in Britain.' He looked at me. ‘You were on that for a while, weren't you? After the accident?

What was it like? Does it work?'

I shrugged. ‘Hard to tell.'

‘Did it mess about with your motor skills? Make you clumsy? I'm thinking of the way she dropped that picture.'

‘Yes. No. Don't forget, at the same time I was taking Prozac, I was also on about a bottle of Bushmills a day. My fine motor skills were fucked to the sky, as was my grasp of reality.'

He nodded slowly. ‘Right after she took it, it was like she was stoned or something. Remember how slowly she spoke? Like she was having to remember every single word that came out of her mouth. And she's a beautiful woman, but you can tell she's not paying attention to herself. Her hair needed washing, and she looked like she hadn't been sleeping.'

‘Yeah, but all that's in keeping with somebody who's worried about the state of their marriage,' I said. ‘You're bound to lose a little sleep if you think that your partner's playing away from home.'

‘Yeah, I suppose. . .'

‘Anyway, she's not paying us to look into her, is she? All we want to know is if the husband is knocking off the sister. What Sophie Sloan does with her private life is up to her.'

He nodded and stood up. ‘You're right. I just think she's weird.

Anyhoo, what are we going to do today?'

I hazarded a guess. ‘You're going to wine and dine potential clients and I'm going to stay in the office and work?'

‘Spoken like a true trusty sidekick.' He turned around. ‘How would you like to go out to Ian Sloan's nursing home and have a poke around?'

‘Seriously?'

‘Yeah, why not? See what the local gossip is.'

‘Jesus, Joe, I don't know what I'm looking for. Are you sure you don't want to do it yourself?'

He indicated the suit. ‘I'm busy, remember?'

‘Bollocks. You're scared they'll keep you in.'

7.4.

Inch Meadows Care Centre turned out to be a bugger to find.

Sophie Sloan had given us an address in Eaglesham, but after stopping twice to ask directions, once at a petrol station where the assistant was barely able to drag his gaze from his copy of
Kerrang
, and again at a post office where the attendant looked like she might have failed the audition to be an extra in
Deliverance
for being too inbred, I eventually discovered it by chance on a back road nearly two miles away from the village. It turned out to be a large brick building in about two acres of land. I didn't spot any BMW's in the half-full car park, but I recognised a maroon Peugeot that almost certainly belonged to Maureen Black. I slid into the space next to it and took a minute to catch my bearings. Before leaving the office, Joe and I had spent an hour or so discussing our plan, looking for pitfalls, trying to anticipate any problems. I felt fairly confident; the risks were fairly low. At the very worst, I would be told to sling my hook and leave. I got out of the car, walked to the front door and rang the bell.

It was answered by a girl in her early twenties. She wore a brown tunic top and a pair of dark blue trousers, her hair tied back in a neat ponytail. ‘Hi. Can I help you?'

In my experience, you're more likely to give yourself away if you sound like you know exactly what you're talking about. ‘Um. . . Hi. My name is Jack. Jack Hill. I'm. . . I was wondering. . . I'm thinking that maybe my father needs long term care and I was driving past and I just wondered if I could ask a few questions.'

A smile that was professional rather than welcoming appeared on her face as she opened the door wider. ‘Of course. Why don't you come in and have a seat? I'll let the boss know that you're here.'

I was escorted down a short corridor and shown into a small lounge. The girl offered coffee before disappearing, and I made myself comfy on a lumpy armchair that looked old enough to be a paying resident.

Like most people under the age of fifty, I didn't know what to expect. Nursing homes have this stigma attached to them. For most of us, they represent the end of the line, the final, unwinnable battle between age and youth. A diet of boil-in-the-bag fish and steamed cabbage. Days spent complaining about the youth of today, in between domino tournaments and exciting rounds of bingo. I wondered what I would be like as an old man, whether I would be the kind of jolly old soul that handed out toffees to children on a seemingly random basis, or if I would be a crotchety old git who spent his days writing letters to the local council. I was just remembering that I hated toffee when a head was poked round the door. ‘Mr. . . Hall?'

I stood up again. ‘Mr Hill. Jack Hill.'

I recognised the woman I had seen from a distance last night. Close up, she was almost as attractive as her sister, but with an added warmth. She wore a dark business suit over a peach blouse, and when she spoke, her voice was pleasant, with none of Sophie's hesitancy. ‘My name's Maureen Black. I'm the clinical nurse manager for Inch Meadows. Stacy told me that you were looking for a care home for your father?'

I shrugged. ‘I think so. I don't know.'

She smiled. ‘Perhaps we better talk in my office. Won't you come this way?'

‘Sure.'

She kept a running commentary as walked back down the corridor. ‘Inch Meadows has been open for nearly nine years. The home itself consists of two wings of thirty beds each. The West Wing is for residents that we class as Elderly Frail, and the East Wing is for residents who have some form of dementia. Of course, it's a guideline rather than a rule. Sometimes a frail resident goes on to develop cognitive problems, but that doesn't mean that we kick them out of one room and move them into another. That wouldn't be very fair at all. Ah, here we are.'

She showed me into an office and we sat down. Behind her was a window that looked into a large dining room. Staff were escorting residents through for lunch. The majority of them were in wheel-chairs, except for a few poor souls who seemed to be in overstuffed armchairs, limbs contracted, eyes vacant. A few walked, either hunched over zimmer frames or leaning on walking sticks, a staff member by their side to guide them, or to catch them if they fell.

Maureen turned to see what I was looking at. ‘Most of our residents have difficulty mobilising, so we need to help them.' She reached into a drawer and took out a form. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your father?'

‘Of course.'

‘What's his name?'

‘Andrew Hill.'

I did my best to help her complete her form, answering questions that Joe and I had spent an hour trying to anticipate. My father was supposedly seventy five years old, and had suffered from mild Alzheimer's for the last three. He'd been living in sheltered housing, and I had taken him with me to attend my sister's wedding in Devon.

Unfortunately, Dad had suffered a severe stroke that had left him completely paralysed down his left side, and we had been told that he would now need nursing care for the rest of his life. They hoped to transfer him to a local hospital, but it might take some time before they could make that happen. While my sister stayed with him in England, I was hoping to arrange a nursing home place for him.

She nodded as I spoke, appearing to swallow the story hook, line and sinker. ‘Quite a few of the residents have similar medical backgrounds. Does the stroke seem to have affected his behaviour at all?'

‘It's hard to tell. He's more confused than normal, but they say that might just be after-effects. It's difficult to understand what he says.

The doctors say that might improve, although they can't be sure.'

‘That's the thing about brain injuries. Those of us in the medical profession like to pretend that we know everything but the truth of the matter is that when it comes to something like a stroke, we're still operating very much on a “best guess” format.'

The girl that had opened the front door pushed her way through the office doors with a mug of coffee. ‘Maureen, the pharmacy's on line one. And I'm sorry, but I really can't cover that shift tomorrow.'

‘Thank you, Stacy. That's alright. Tell the pharmacy I'll call them back.'

We watched her go. I took a sip of my coffee; it was awful. No doubt the place saved money by buying cheap instant by the truck-load. Maureen said, ‘Shelly's one of the staff nurses.'

‘How many staff do you have?'

‘Plenty. We try to have one carer or nurse for every five residents during the day shift– that's eight am to eight pm.'

‘Long hours.' I decided to flirt a little. ‘I bet you don't have much time for a social life.'

She shrugged. ‘People hear on the news that there's a shortage of trained nurses, but they don't realise that it's a real, genuine problem.

About ten minutes before you arrived I was told that one of my regulars has broken their ankle, so I'm trying to find a replacement at short notice.'

‘What happens if you can't?'

‘We hire an agency nurse.'

‘Isn't that expensive?'

She shrugged. ‘Money is no object when it comes to our residents.'

Bollocks, I thought. ‘Who owns the place? Is it one of these big companies. . . BUPA, or Eastern Star?'

She smiled at that. ‘I think you must mean Southern Cross. No, Inch Meadows is privately owned by a man called Ian Sloan. My brother-in-law, actually. I'd introduce you, but he's away on business.

BUPA offered to buy the home last year, but Ian turned them down.

Anyway, would you like to have a wee look around?'

I put my coffee down, glad to be offered an excuse to abandon it.