That weekend came as a natural break in the investigation for Cross. He would go back to it full throttle on Monday. Early in his career he had been unable to do this – switch off from a case when not at work; he found he couldn’t settle when a case was outstanding, incomplete. He felt uncomfortable, guilty, if he wasn’t working twenty-four-seven to put right whatever injustice had been committed.
One of the few senior officers who could see beyond his, then undiagnosed, condition had told him that, as a policeman, there would always be an ongoing unsolved case in his in-box. Once Cross had got past the confusion that he didn’t have an actual in-box, as such, to put his cases in, he listened as he was told that the rest of his career would be like this, and if he carried on working the way he was – all weekends and well into the night every night – he would either burn out or break down. He owed it to the victims to be in the best condition both mentally and physically to try and get them justice.
Cross could see the logic of this, and although the change in his working methods that followed was slow, he eventually managed to force himself to take regular breaks and stand back. Obviously there were times when an investigation gained a momentum of its own, and sometimes as they got close to a breakthrough the hours would become long, but on the whole he regulated his time. This weekend was one of those regulated mental breaks for him.
He spent the Saturday embarking on the monumental task of trying to sort through his father’s stuff and clear out the flat. He threw out things he felt were useless and worthless, but tried to do it through the lens of his father’s obsession. When he was unsure of an object’s value, both practical and financial, he would err on his father’s side and keep hold of it.
He did apply a logic to the process, though, which was that the nearer to the bottom of any pile he found an object, the less likely it was to survive the cull. He then tried to apply a dust rule to demonstrate that something hadn’t been moved or used for years and could therefore be disposed of without guilt. The trouble was that the majority of the flat was covered in a layer of dust, which made differentiation all the more difficult. Some of the dust was so thick, it was as if removal men had come in and surrounded the objects in a form of protective felt prior to moving them out.
He started in the hall, and by the end of the day had twenty-three large plastic bin bags filled with the rubbish. The process was made all the more unpleasant in that the bags had a smell of cheap rubber that he found quite nauseating. It was like being on a train with faulty brakes that, when they burned, filled your nasal passages with an acrid stench. There were several clear plastic storage boxes filled with things that had made the cut and survived. A man with a van arrived late in the afternoon and took the rubbish away with him.
As Cross left and looked at the clear hall – except for the storage boxes piled up on along one wall – he realised that working this way was going to take him too long. The trouble was that he knew he needed to be in charge and monitor the whole thing. He’d have to work something out – a more efficient system. On the bike ride home he thought that Mackenzie might be a source of plentiful, young, pliant, able-bodied helpers in need of some cash. He would speak to her on Monday.
*
On the Sunday, Cross went to the care home to visit his father, timing his visit for after lunch. He often found the smell of any kind of institutional catering quite sickening. Also the idea of witnessing several elderly people struggling to eat their food was anathema to him. It wasn’t just that he found others’ eating habits generally intolerable, it was the image of these people eating only the food that was offered to them, and having no real choice, that profoundly depressed him. It was such an evocative example of their lately surrendered independence.
Even though the home was an upscale establishment with, he imagined, catering far superior to most, there was something pitiable to him in these people, summoned together at regimented times, not of their choosing, to eat food also not of their choosing. But he was pleasantly surprised when he arrived to find that there was no residual odour of lunch in the air. He looked for Raymond in his room, but it was empty. He went into the sitting room, where several residents were sleeping in their chairs around the walls. A couple played cards at a table in the centre of the room. The familiarity of their gestures to each other – unspoken signals learnt over decades – and the amenable, habitual silence that enveloped them, told Cross they were married. He imagined that if one of them passed away there – which unless they moved homes was inevitable – the other one wouldn’t hang around for too long before following.
There was a small collection of empty wheelchairs at one end of the room, crammed together awkwardly as if something was going on over there that they all wanted to see. Another group of residents were watching the television. A woman called out to him.
‘Are you looking for Raymond?’ she asked.
‘I am,’ he replied.
‘He’s over there.’ She pointed to the party of wheelchairs.
On closer inspection, Cross could see Raymond’s bald head protruding over one of the chairs. He walked over.
‘Dad?’
‘Hello, son,’ Raymond said, without looking up from the job in hand. He took the wheel off one of the wheelchairs and began oiling the axle.
‘What are you doing?’
‘A couple of repairs, but mostly routine servicing. Bit of oil. Cleaning out a load of gunge. Replacing the odd part. It’s amazing how much wear they develop, although we shouldn’t really be surprised, I suppose.’
It was typical of Raymond, thought Cross, to find something practical to fill his time. It obviously made him happy and kept him occupied.
‘Are they paying you?’ Cross asked.
‘Certainly not. The very thought,’ replied Raymond. ‘Though I have been the glad recipient of some rather delicious home-made cakes.’ He said this with a knowing smile and carried on with his work. He knew better than to offer his son any refreshments, as he would simply refuse – probably with a lengthy discourse on his reasoning and suppositions about how the tea or coffee was incorrectly made.
Cross had decided to tell his father about ‘operation clear-up’ on his way over, in the full knowledge that no meaningful conversation about it would be forthcoming. However, he felt it only right that his father should be kept informed.
‘So I went to your flat yesterday,’ he said.
‘Could you pass me that spanner?’ Raymond replied.
‘I made a start on clearing out the hall,’ Cross went on.
‘Really fiddly, this wheel assembly, but if you think about it, it has to do a lot of load-bearing on a daily basis. Multiply that over the years…’ Raymond said, ignoring him.
‘I got a man in a van to come and help,’ Cross persisted.
‘There, looks much better.’ Raymond held the wheelchair away from him. He then looked at his son. ‘We agreed you could “clear out” the flat, as you call it, but we never agreed to discuss it.’
‘We didn’t in point of fact agree to anything. You have been forced into accepting the situation as the only possible way of your ever seeing the inside of your flat again, and not ending up in a place such as this to see out the rest of your days,’ said Cross, not unreasonably, he thought.
‘Don’t be pedantic,’ said his father.
‘I’m merely being factual. But if you don’t wish to discuss it, that is more than acceptable.’
Raymond started on another wheelchair. After a few minutes he broke the silence.
‘There’s a lady in here. Celia over there.’ He pointed to an elderly woman sleeping in one of the armchairs. ‘She’s a wonderful woman. A nurse all her life. Devoted herself to others. She’s ninety-four today.’
‘And your point is?’
‘She loves Cole Porter. Could you play some for her? It’d be such a treat for the old dear,’ Raymond replied.
‘I don’t know any Cole Porter,’ Cross said.
‘There’s some sheet music in the piano stool. I checked.’ Raymond smiled exaggeratedly. It was one of the ‘tells’ his son knew so well – it meant that he was lying. Cross thought it was likely that his father had bought the sheet music on the internet. The coincidence was too much.
A skill that Cross had developed as a child was the ability to sight read music and play the piano. Raymond thought at the time that it was a reflection of the way his mind worked – being able to analyse patterns and interpret them with ease.
‘She’s asleep,’ Cross reasoned, as a suitable excuse to get out of it.
‘Who better to wake her up on her birthday than Cole?’ his father said, eyes twinkling.
‘Impossible. He’s dead.’
‘Go on. Please? You’ll be interested in the piano. It was donated by the family of a former resident who had been a concert pianist,’ said Raymond.
He knew his son well. This little piece of historical anecdotalism immediately intrigued Cross. He walked across the room like a shy child who had been asked to play by his parents after Christmas dinner for all the relatives he barely knew. He tried to come across as less awkward to the residents – none of whom were actually looking at him – by pretending he was going over simply to inspect the instrument.
It was in fact a Steinway baby grand, which both surprised and pleased him. It had been placed by the French windows, as if to say that a piano of its stature and from this particular manufacturer required a garden backdrop. The family who’d donated it must’ve been grateful indeed to the home to leave behind such an elegant and generous gift.
Cross noticed a small brass plaque naming the concert pianist and noted her dates. The plaque went on to say that this was her practice piano which she kept at home. There was also a black and white photograph of her giving a recital at the Wigmore Hall in London. Cross later discovered that she had suffered from dementia, and when the disease had progressed to its very worst stage, and she was unable to understand or communicate, she was still able to play certain complicated classical pieces flawlessly. The family had moved the piano into her room at the care home and then left it there, as a gift, when she passed away.
Cross found the suspiciously brand new book of Cole Porter sheet music at the top of the pile in the piano stool. He opened it at the appropriate page and scanned it briefly. He then tested the keys quietly. He had suspected that the piano would be out of tune, in which case he would’ve declined to play – he simply couldn’t tolerate the sound of untuned instruments. To his surprise, the piano was perfectly tuned. The home obviously looked after its musical bequest.
Cross started to play ‘Night and Day’. He played a little hesitantly at first but then found his stride. Raymond looked on with a smidgeon of paternal pride from the other side of the room. The rare occasions on which Cross allowed others to witness his many gifts pleased his father hugely. Cross was on the second verse when he became aware of some voices singing along quietly. He looked up to see many of the residents, now all wide awake, singing along. Celia was also awake and beaming from ear to ear.
He played for over an hour. Residents appeared from their rooms, some wheeled in by staff. A group of the stronger voices gathered around the piano, belting out the songs with admirable gusto. Cross himself was actually really enjoying it. He liked to learn new music – he would remember these tunes by heart and would be able to perform them without music from now on, after playing them just the once – but he was also aware that he was providing these people with a welcome diversion on an anonymous Sunday afternoon – their being at an age where one day rolled inexorably and indeterminately into another. A couple of visitors arrived and were politely asked to ‘Sssh!’ by the relatives they’d come to see. They then obediently pulled up a chair and sat down to listen.
Towards the end of the hour a member of staff, possibly sensing that the spontaneous concert was about to come to an end, came over and whispered into Cross’s ear. He listened intently as he continued to play ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’, then nodded to show he’d understood the message. At the end of the number, as everyone joined in the applause for the pianist and, Cross suspected, themselves, the lights faded in the room and a member of staff entered carrying a birthday cake resplendent with lit candles and sparklers. On cue Cross broke into a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, which everyone then began to sing.
After the staff member had blown out the candles for Celia, Cross closed the lid of the piano carefully and respectfully. He had felt really refreshed by this unexpected interlude. He hadn’t thought about Flick’s case since he arrived. He was in such a state of post-performance euphoria that he completely forgot to say goodbye to his father on his way out. Raymond didn’t notice, as he was happily engrossed in another wheelchair repair. As Cross walked through reception he heard a voice call out to him.
‘DS Cross?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, turning to see a lady with a walking frame moving towards him. She must’ve been in her late eighties, with her white hair cropped closely to her head in a practical yet elegant kind of way.
‘I wonder if you could spare me five minutes?’ she said politely. He looked unsure, which this woman seemed to pick up on immediately. ‘My name’s Moffatt, Esther Moffatt. Former DCI Esther Moffatt.’
‘Hello, ma’am,’ he said.
She smiled at his politeness.
‘I wondered if you could entertain an old policewoman for a few minutes and tell me what you are working at the moment,’ she said.
Cross paused, saw that he had been leaving seventeen minutes before the time he had allotted for the visit to his father, and so agreed.
He sat in a chair opposite her. She told him that she’d known him by name before she’d retired and it was a real pleasure to meet him in person. Cross was a sucker for approbation at the best of times and so replayed her the details of Flick’s case, sparing none. He often did this in the office – going over what they knew and didn’t know on a case at any given time. It helped him get a detached view of it all, and DCI Moffatt was an excellent, attentive audience. She listened intently as he told her about Sandra, Flick and Daisy, her missing journal, the missing diamorphine phial; the other girls, Dr Sutton, Brian and Simon and finally Danny Stokes and his father. He didn’t hold back on any detail, including everything that had now been declared irrelevant to the investigation.
When he finished she sat back in her chair and processed what he’d just told her.
‘I know Gerry Stokes,’ she said.
‘In what context? A case?’
‘No, he owned a home I was in for respite care once after a hip replacement.’
‘Did you form an opinion of him?’
‘He’s one of those businessmen who seems to have his fingers in lots of pies. Quite diverse businesses but not without a kind of internal synergy. The laundry bill for his care homes – he owns three that I’m aware of – would keep his dry cleaning business afloat on its own. But I always thought he looked a little shifty. As if he was hiding something. From what you’ve said it sounds like his son’s behaviour must be concerning to him if only for its potential effect on his business. Was Miss Wilson a problem of his son’s creation that Gerry needed to solve?’
Cross liked the way she referred to Flick with a respectful formality.
‘It had to be someone she knew,’ she added.
‘Correct,’ he answered, checking his watch and seeing he had three minutes left of his scheduled time.
‘I see you’re in a hurry. Do you have a card?’ she asked.
‘I do.’
‘Might I have it?’
‘Why?’
‘In case I come up with anything,’ she said, as if it was obvious.
Cross was about to reply that he thought it highly unlikely that she would, when he thought of Ottey and what she would do in this situation. He knew the answer and so he indulged the old policewoman by handing over his card. Then, with an imperceptible bow and a whispered ‘Ma’am’, he backed out of the home and walked to his bike. He checked his watch. One minute to spare. ‘Excellent,’ he thought.