Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 (22 page)

‘But you didn’t, and they’re safe.’

‘I suppose we’ve got their father to thank for that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t Kate tell you? They were with us because Ken was coming round to see her again. Ranald and I worried it would go badly and it did, apparently. I don’t know the details but Kate was so upset she decided to have an early night and collect the bairns in the morning.’

‘So Ken was at Tolbyres earlier in the evening?’

‘Yes.’ Etta stared at Zoe. ‘You don’t think he had anything to do with the fire, do you?’

‘That’s for the police to decide.’

‘I can’t imagine him wishing Kate any serious harm.’

Douglas leaned forward to join the conversation. ‘I’d hoped we’d seen the last of him. Kate’s better off without him and so are her children.’

‘Nothing ever stays the same, Douglas,’ Etta said.

Their conversation petered out. Zoe occasionally glanced at her mobile to keep track of the time and Etta sat bolt upright beside her, while Douglas slumped and fidgeted. He continually received texts and relayed messages of support to his mother from friends and family keen to help despite the late hour.

At around one in the morning, Mather arrived, accompanied by Trent. The presence of his sergeant, even though only one of them was officially investigating the fire at Kate’s home, appeared to have restored his usual air of being in command, despite the state of his clothes.

‘Hello, Etta. Have you heard yet how Kate is?’

Etta scrambled to her feet, although this didn’t nearly bring her up to Mather’s height. ‘No. They won’t even tell Zoe. Can you find out for us?’

‘Better they spend time tending to her than talking to us, I think. But Sergeant Trent is here in an official capacity, so that may open some doors.’

Always able to interpret the most oblique of his boss’s instructions, Trent left the room. Etta sat back down, making room for Mather to sit next to her, and Zoe listened to him tell her about the treatment Kate had received in the ambulance. She hadn’t realised she was dozing until her mobile startled her by announcing an incoming text. To her surprise, Mather had gone.

The message was from her father.
Helen’s died. I know you won’t get this till morning but I needed to tell you. Will call when I can. A

She muttered, ‘Oh no,’ under her breath, forgetting Etta had exceptionally good hearing for someone of her age.

‘What’s wrong, Zoe?’

‘A friend’s wife has passed away.’

‘How sad. Was she young?’

‘Only sixty. She had breast cancer.’

‘Are they close friends?’

‘Not really.’

‘He must have wanted very badly to tell you, texting this late.’

‘I don’t suppose he’ll be getting much sleep tonight. It probably helps, having something to do.’

‘You’ll know better than me, having lost your husband.’

Zoe bit her lip, unsure what to say. ‘Has Kate told you about that?’

‘No. I thought you’d come to it when you felt ready.’

‘Now’s hardly the time though.’

Etta covered Zoe’s hand with one of her own and looked about to speak, when the door opened. Expecting to see Mather or Trent again, Zoe was surprised when a man wearing a navy blue tunic entered. His thick dark hair was cut in a boyish style and he looked familiar.

‘You’re Kate Mackenzie’s family?’ he asked.

Etta jumped to her feet. ‘I’m her mother, this is her brother and her friend Zoe.’

‘I’m Jacques Kerr, the A&E consultant. I’ve been looking after Kate since the paramedics brought her in.’

Zoe remembered him now, from her own visit to A&E after the car crash last winter.

‘Is she going to be alright?’ Douglas demanded.

The consultant’s face remained impassive, the look Zoe tried to maintain when giving out bad news. Her heart sank.

TWENTY-FIVE

‘Thankfully, the fire didn’t reach Kate so she’s suffered no burns,’ Jacques Kerr said. ‘But she inhaled a lot of smoke and was having difficulty breathing by the time the ambulance got here, so I’ve had to put in a surgical airway. She’s now on a ventilator to get as much oxygen into her lungs as possible.’

Etta clutched at Zoe’s arm as if to stop herself from collapsing. ‘Is she awake? She’ll be so frightened. You do know she’s deaf, that she lip-reads, don’t you?’

‘The paramedics told us that as soon as they brought her in. She’s unconscious at present because we’re keeping her sedated. When the blood tests and chest X-rays indicate an improvement in her condition, we can lighten the sedation and she’ll gradually wake up.’

‘Has she been moved to Intensive Care?’ Zoe asked.

‘She will be shortly, but I thought you might all like to see her before then.’

‘We can see her?’ Etta said.

‘Of course. I’ll take you now.’

They followed the consultant out of the family room, Etta leaning heavily on her son’s arm and Zoe bringing up the rear. Just before they entered the area on the other side of the door marked ‘Resuscitation’ through which Zoe had been wheeled several months earlier, Jacques Kerr stopped and turned to them. ‘She’s connected to tubes and drips but Kate’s still there underneath it all.’

Etta cried out in dismay when she saw Kate, rushed to her side and lifted her hand, taking care not to dislodge the drip running into it. Douglas hung back, staring at his sister on the trolley, her pink nightie all but covered by a pale blue blanket. Alongside the usual hospital smells, Zoe caught the tang of smoke. Despite years of seeing patients in similar situations, she was shocked by the sight of someone she cared for like this.

Monitors beeped, the ventilator hissed, no one spoke. They stood like that for what felt like minutes to Zoe but was probably only a few seconds, until a nurse broke up the tableau by bringing in a chair for Etta. The consultant then explained to Etta and Douglas what each of the machines surrounding Kate was doing for her. They nodded silently at this, until he pointed out the cricothyroidotomy.

Douglas, still standing well away from his sister, flinched. ‘You had to cut a hole in her neck?’

‘We would have intubated through her mouth but her airway had swollen badly from the heat and smoke.’

‘But it’ll come out soon?’

‘When Kate’s able to breathe unaided, yes.’

Etta stroked her daughter’s face. Without looking up she said, ‘Zoe, is there anything else we should know?’

‘Only that Kate’s in the best possible hands,’ Zoe said. ‘They have one-to-one nursing in the ICU, so she’ll get all the attention she needs.’

‘She’ll be so frightened if she wakes up and no one’s there to explain what’s happened. Can’t I stay with her?’

Zoe looked to the consultant for help.

‘Once she’s settled in the ICU someone will find you and take you up to see her,’ he said.

It looked for a moment as if Etta was going to refuse to leave her daughter’s side, but she slowly rose, bent over to kiss Kate’s forehead and allowed Douglas to lead her away. Zoe hung back to speak to the consultant.

‘You’re a GP, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I remember seeing you here a few months ago.’

‘Yes. I crashed my car. Nothing broken, thank goodness.’

‘I do my best not to blind relatives with science, but from the look on your face, you want to know more than I told them.’ He smiled. ‘Go ahead and ask.’

‘I’ve spoken to Kate’s friend who travelled over in the ambulance with her. It sounds as though she stopped breathing before she got here and . . .’

‘And you’re worried about possible long term effects?’

Zoe nodded.

He looked her square in the face. ‘I can’t give you any guarantees. We’ll only know when she wakes up.’

On her way to rejoin Etta and Douglas, Zoe found herself clinging to the fact he’d said ‘when’, not ‘if’.

Nearly two hours passed before a nurse in a wine-coloured tunic came to take them up to Intensive Care, during which time Douglas had tried to persuade Zoe to go home and Richard had arrived, reporting that all three of Kate’s children were asleep but Ranald was refusing to go to bed until he’d spoken to his wife.

In the lift, Etta again voiced her anxiety that Kate’s deafness might be overlooked.

‘We won’t forget, I promise,’ the nurse said.

Kate had been redressed in a hospital gown, her smoke-ridden pink nightie doubtless now consigned to a bin. She slept peacefully surrounded by even more equipment than she had been in A&E. Her mother sat down next to the bed and whispered, ‘I’ll not be far away, sweetheart. The doctors and nurses are going to care for you and I’ll be back soon.’ Looking up at Zoe, she said in her normal voice, ‘Silly, aren’t I? She couldn’t hear me even if she was awake.’

Zoe left Borders General Hospital a little after four-thirty in the morning, refusing the offer of a lift back home from Douglas, who was returning to Tolbyres Farm while Richard took their mother to her friend in Melrose. The last time Zoe had stayed up all night was when she’d been working in a hospital herself several years before, but rather than fatigue, she felt charged with nervous energy as she walked to the Jeep. It was getting light. In fact, although she’d moved just a few hundred miles north, the Scottish skies barely seemed to go dark at present. Already vehicles were coming and going in the car park, but the roads were empty once she had driven a few miles. Now heading northeast, she had to grope for her sunglasses as the low sun blazed in through the windscreen.

Try as she might to dispel them, thoughts of Kate constantly bombarded her. Even forcing herself to reflect on the joy of seeing her baby in just a few weeks only served to remind her of their recent conversation when Kate confessed to wanting another child. And now Kate’s own life hung in the balance, all her hopes and plans—and those of her family—put on hold.

A wave of exhaustion swept over Zoe. Her legs and arms felt weak and tears pricked at her eyes. She considered pulling over into a layby for a rest, but with Westerlea only a few miles away, she took a deep breath and drove on.

With no joyful greeting from Mac, the cottage felt empty and unwelcoming. Having consumed nothing more than a packet of crisps and several vending-machine coffees since her meal with Patrick, which felt like days ago, she made herself a piece of toast and a mug of tea then sat down with her mobile. She reread Andrew’s brief text but put off responding until later. She did, though, text Patrick to tell him she was home and planned to sleep for a couple of hours, and to ask when she should collect Mac. Her mobile rang almost as soon as she’d hit send. It was still only five-thirty in the morning.

‘What news on Kate?’ Patrick asked.

‘She’s in Intensive Care, sedated and on a ventilator.’

‘What do the doctors say?’

‘They’re being noncommittal.’

‘How’s the family coping?’

‘They’re pulling together, as they always do. Etta’s refusing to go far, though no one’s allowed to stay with Kate all the time, so Douglas has taken her round to a friend who lives in Melrose to be close at hand. The other brothers are on their way. I don’t think they want Ranald to see her like that because he’s so fragile himself, but they can’t keep him away forever.’

‘And what about you, Zoe, how are you?’

‘I’ll be fine. I’m just tired. And worried, of course.’

‘Well, you needn’t fret about Mac. He’s okay here, more than okay, in fact. Why do you think I’m up so early? He and Peggy were chasing each other round the house at five o’clock.’

‘Don’t you have to work today?’

‘I might have to pop out briefly but the dogs can be left alone for a couple of hours. Unless you’re missing Mac so much you want me to bring him home?’

‘I’m going back to the hospital later so it would suit me if he stayed with you for a bit longer, if you don’t mind.’

‘Do what you need to do. Just keep me informed, okay?’

‘Thanks.’

She ended the call, wondered briefly what Patrick had been going to tell her last night just before the fire engine appeared behind them, then went to bed. When she lay down, her mind filled with images of Kate in her bed in the ICU and Etta sitting on a chair beside her. Although she would never tell anyone this, Zoe feared the worst for her friend. Heart racing, she reached over for her book but she’d hardly read one page when her eyes started to close. The next thing she knew, the house phone was ringing and her bedside clock read eleven-fifteen.

She didn’t rush to answer the phone but couldn’t get back to sleep either, so a few minutes later she got up, put on the kettle and dialled 1471 to find out who had called. It was Paul’s home number.

‘Thank you for ringing back, my dear. You must have thought I was trying to avoid you. I wanted to put you in the picture about how things stand with Walter.’

He hadn’t heard about Kate’s fire. Zoe tried to stay calm but was embarrassed to end up almost crying down the phone as she told Paul of the previous night’s events. When she finished speaking, he took so long to reply that she wondered if he was still there.

‘How dreadful,’ he said eventually. ‘It puts my troubles with Walter into perspective. How is she this morning?’

‘I haven’t phoned the hospital yet and I’m not sure if they’d tell me anyway. I’ll text Douglas in a minute.’

‘Don’t let me stop you from doing that. Would you like me to call you again later?’

‘Thank you but a few more minutes won’t make any difference. Have you managed to persuade Walter to stop his ridiculous vendetta against me? I really thought we’d sorted this out months ago.’

‘Sadly not. If anything, he’s even more entrenched. I’m kicking myself for not reading our agreement more carefully before I signed it.’

‘So what are you going to do? Maybe I should step aside for this other doctor.’

‘Certainly not! I’ve realised how much latitude I’ve given Walter over the years. He’s not going to get away with being so self-centred any longer. I’m seeing my solicitor on Monday.’

Surprised to hear such fighting talk coming from Paul, Zoe wondered if the same influence which had caused him to shave off his beard and discard his tartan ties was now giving him the courage to stand up to his partner. ‘Maybe then Walter will back down. He won’t like spending money on his own legal advice.’