Bernard stood with his foot on the bottom step of the stairs up to his office. He was having a great deal of difficulty in getting his other foot to move. Try as he might he couldn’t work out a way to frame the day’s events that wouldn’t result in a torrent of abuse from his temporary boss. Whichever way you looked at it, taking the wrong Defaulter to a Health Check smacked of incompetency. He could argue the mitigating facts that they had a very poor quality photograph to work from, and a woman claiming to be the person they were looking for. He guessed neither of these things would cut much ice.
Carole had gone straight home from A&E, leaving him to single-handedly bear the brunt of any yelling that was going to take place. Not that anyone would have yelled at Carole. The state that her face was in meant that she would get nothing but sympathy. The blame was his, and his alone. He looked at the stone steps ahead of him, and decided that nothing, but nothing, was going to get him mounting them.
‘And I just said to him, “Kev, if you ever see her again, that’s like you and me finished, right?”’
Marguerite’s distinctive voice carried through from reception, and suddenly Bernard found himself half a flight up and climbing. The only thing worse than explaining the situation to Maitland would be explaining it to Marguerite, who would want all the gory details and might even cry as an expression of her empathy. He ran the last few steps.
‘Maitland?’
‘What?’ The voice came from inside Paterson’s cave. Bernard did his best to assess the tone, and decided it was resting somewhere between irritation and fury. He decided that he better brave his wrath and walked into the office.
Maitland was surrounded by even more piles of paper than he had been before they left. The paperwork currently covered not only the desk, but most of the floor as well. Perhaps Maitland had some kind of organisational system that wasn’t immediately apparent to anyone else, but to Bernard’s eye it looked like chaos.
‘The Parliamentary Committee papers,’ said Maitland, by way of explanation. ‘Didn’t realise there would be quite so much to get through. How did you get on with the Defaulter?’
‘We found her and took her in for a Health Check . . .’
‘Great. Good work. Make sure you write it up fully.’ Maitland returned to leafing through the documents in front of him. After a few seconds he realised that Bernard hadn’t actually left and looked up again.
‘Except that it wasn’t actually Alessandra Barr.’
Maitland stared at him. ‘You took the wrong person for a Health Check? How is that even possible?’
‘Remember yesterday we went to Alessandra Barr’s Green Card address in Morningside, and she wasn’t there, but there was a man there called Stephen McNiven? Well, we went to Stephen McNiven’s house and—’
‘Can you just cut straight to the part where you cocked up without the half-hour preamble?’
‘I’m getting there! This woman answered the door and said she was Alessandra Barr and she had Alessandra’s Green Card, so we, ehm, believed her.’
‘But the photo?’
‘The photo on the Green Card is terrible. It could be almost anyone.’
‘And you didn’t think it was a bit convenient, her answering the door and agreeing to come for a Health Check?’
‘No, why would I? There was obviously a connection between McNiven and our Defaulter, and she had the Green Card. Honestly, if the HET can’t provide us with good quality photographs . . .’
‘OK, OK, I take your point. I assume this fake Barr woman is now under arrest for impersonating a Health Defaulter?’
‘Actually, no.’ He paused, while he tried to figure out the most concise way to describe the second disaster of the day. ‘There was a bit of an altercation at the Health Check clinic, and unfortunately she kicked Carole in the face and ran off.’
‘Kicked Carole . . .’ Maitland looked horrified. ‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s black and blue from here to here.’ He pointed to the top and bottom of his face. ‘I took her to Casualty and they said her jaw wasn’t broken, just badly bruised. The doctor suggested that she went home immediately for a couple of days’ rest. She was pretty shaken up, as you can imagine.’
‘What am I . . .? I mean, what should we . . .? Ugh.’ Maitland plonked his elbows on top of two of the piles of paper and rested his head in his hands. ‘I’m not sure how we’re supposed to respond to this.’ He looked up at Bernard. ‘Go on, then. You’ve memorised the entire procedures manual – what do we need to do?’
‘I haven’t memorised the whole manual, I only memorised the bit about disciplinary procedure in case Mr Paterson decided to throw the book at me one day. But, for what it’s worth, I think all today’s activities are now the problem of Police Scotland . . .’
‘We should call them . . .’
‘I spoke to them already when we were at A&E. They’ve had a statement from Carole and me, and they were going to talk to the Health Check clinic staff. We’ve given them the address that we found her at, and they’re going to follow that up. So I think we’re OK.’
‘OK?’ Maitland looked incredulous. ‘We’re now down to a team of two people and you call that OK?’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
Bernard waited for Maitland to start shouting, but he seemed preoccupied. ‘Well, you’d better come with me to this Parliamentary thing tomorrow. You obviously can’t be trusted on your own.’
‘But . . .’ A million worries were competing for space in Bernard’s brain.
‘What?’
‘I’m concerned about Alessandra Barr, and by that I meant the real Alessandra Barr. She’s missing, but somebody else has her Green Card. How much can you do without a Green Card? I mean, you can’t buy food, you can’t get on a bus, you can’t access any kind of services. And yet we still haven’t heard of her being picked up by the police or anyone.’
‘You think she’s dead?’
‘It’s possible. Equally, if she is working as a prostitute, she could probably survive for a while without linking into the formal economy. But leaving without her Green Card suggests she had a hurried exit, and I didn’t much like that McNiven character. I’d really like to be out there looking for her.’
Maitland sighed. ‘We get this Committee thing out of the way, then we’ll both concentrate on finding her.’
‘I’ve never been to a Parliamentary Virus Committee before.’
‘Neither have I.’ He looked slightly doubtfully at the papers spread in front of him. ‘Bernard?’
He looked up at him, and for a moment Bernard thought he was going to ask for help. ‘What?’
The moment passed. Maitland shook himself. ‘Nothing. Go home.’