Monday 22 October, 10.50 a.m.
Bridget was waiting for them outside the door; a shake of her head combined with a slightly doleful expression told Joanna what she needed to know.
Ms Golding led the way, striding ahead quickly, her heels tapping a staccato, business-like rapid rhythm on the wooden floor. Taller than she had initially appeared. More imposing now she had regained some of her equilibrium. She tossed back comments as she turned right, moved back along the corridor and headed towards a curving staircase with carpeted wide, shallow treads. ‘He shares his room with Alfred Dean.’ A slightly mocking smile warmed her face when she turned around. ‘I don’t think you’ll get much out of him either.’
Joanna shrugged. ‘All the same.’
With a little huff of her shoulders, the manager ascended elegantly, head held high, her heels soft now on the carpet. ‘Mr Foster’s room is upstairs.’
‘And he could manage to climb up?’ Joanna had a vision: soft slippers, hesitant steps, hands clinging on to the bannister.
‘Oh, yes. He could get up the stairs. But we do have a lift,’ she said, tossing the words back at them as though Joanna and Bridget were prospective clients searching for a place for an elderly relative. Both picking up on the spiel, the two police exchanged amused glances.
Outside a door with a number 11 on; the manager knocked, listened, knocked again and pushed it open.
The room was light and sunny and smelt pleasantly of soap, twin beds taking up most of the floor space. A corner had been used for an en-suite shower room, and as they entered a man shuffled out, behind him the sound of a toilet flushing and a tap still running. He gave them a wide grin which showed his false teeth had slipped. The result was bizarre. Joanna returned his grin.
Once she’d turned the tap off in the bathroom, Sandie addressed him with a friendly arm around his shoulders. ‘Alf, love.’
‘Aye?’
‘These are the police.’ Her tone was moderated, as though she was talking to a four-year-old, but very friendly.
‘Very nice,’ Alf responded, looking Joanna and Bridget up and down with interest. Then he turned faded blue eyes back to Sandie for an explanation. ‘They’ve come about Zac, love. Looks like he’s wandered off sometime in the night. They’re wondering if you’ve got any idea what’s happened to him.’
The old man plonked himself down on the bed and looked suitably thoughtful before responding. ‘I don’t rightly know.’
Joanna pulled up a chair so her face was on a level with his. ‘Mr Dean,’ she said, ‘when did you last see Mr Foster?’
Unfortunately Alf took his cue from the home manager who’d stepped in. ‘Last night, was it, Alf?’
It illuminated a dark corner of his mind. ‘Aye,’ he said, bright now with inspiration. ‘Aye that were it. He were ’ere when I went to bed but when I woke …’ Again he glanced at the home manager, ‘’e’d gone.’
Joanna took over. ‘Did you hear him go in the night?’
‘No. At least … No, I don’t think so.’
Joanna looked at them both. ‘Had his bed been slept in?’
‘Yes.’ It was Sandie who supplied the answer in a defensive and uncompromising clipped tone, confrontational now as her eyes scanned the room and landed back on Joanna. ‘He’d had his sleeping tablets as I told you, around nine, and been seen fast asleep by the night staff at two o’clock in the morning. When they came to wake him around seven he wasn’t here.’
Joanna backpedalled. ‘So he was seen asleep in bed at two a.m. and was noticed missing at seven a.m.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ Honesty took over. ‘At least …’ The question flustered her now. ‘They probably pop their heads round the door on the two o’clock round and just check, I expect, so as not to disturb the sleeping patients.’
Joanna sensed something in her hesitation. ‘So you’re saying he went sometime between two and seven a.m.’
Sandie Golding’s eyes were definitely evasive as they skittered around the room.
Joanna stood up, walked back to the door. Because of the en suite, from the door, whether the bathroom door was open or closed, whereas Alfred Dean’s bed was clearly visible, Zachary Foster’s bed was obscured.
Another of Colclough’s little mantras.
People who tell one lie are perfectly capable of feeding you an entire pack of them.
Mentally she adjusted the times of potential disappearance. In all probability Mr Zachary Foster had gone missing sometime between nine p.m. and seven a.m., which was a much wider window of opportunity and would have given him the potential for travelling quite a bit further.
She looked to the manager, feeling her face display hostility to the deceit. ‘No one heard anything at any time of the night? Not Mr Foster creeping down the stairs? Not a door opening, closing, bolts being shot back? Nothing?’ Joanna didn’t bother making any effort to suppress the scepticism in her voice. Already this was a story full of holes.
And from Sandie’s silence she was not about to darn them.
They both knew that even if the night staff had been conscientious enough to check their patients more regularly, unless they’d actually entered the room, they couldn’t be sure that Zachary hadn’t left his bed any time after nine p.m.
She turned back to Alf Dean who was watching with bright-eyed interest. ‘Do you sleep heavily, Mr Dean?’
‘Oh aye,’ he said, so pleased with himself he was almost patting himself on the back. ‘Nothing would wake me.’
Sandie watched him indulgently. ‘He has sleeping tablets,’ she said. ‘They all do. They knock them right out.’ Then she appeared to realize what she had said and pressed her lips together to prevent any more rogue statements escaping.
‘Mr Dean, do you have to get up in the night to go to the toilet?’
‘Sometimes,’ he responded brightly.
‘Did you last night?’
‘I don’t rightly remember.’ He looked troubled at his lack of certainty.
It was tempting to search the room and then leave. But while Bridget opened drawers and went through the wardrobe, Joanna turned back to the manager. ‘How long has Mr Foster been in Ryland’s?’
‘Eighteen months.’
‘But this is the first time he’s tried to leave?’
Slowly Sandie nodded. Joanna wanted to ask whether this might be a symptom of worsening dementia rather than a search for his missing toy, but she hesitated to pursue this avenue in front of the bright-eyed and alert Alfie.
But the fact remained that Zachary’s first bid for freedom after a year and a half of residence had been successful. Perhaps as much as twelve hours later, he was still at large. The weather was worsening. And that troubled her.
Could this really be over a lost toy?
‘How mobile was he?’
A touch of irritation. ‘He could get upstairs. He could get around. It wasn’t his mobility that was the problem.’
Joanna nodded and turned back to Alf who was watching her with an eager, alert expression, almost willing her to ask him another question. Mr Helpful.
So she checked up on another part of the story. ‘Had Zac been troubled lately?’
‘Oh aye,’ he said. ‘Ever since he lost his teddy. He was looking for it everywhere.’
Something strange happened with his teeth, so he adjusted them with his fingers – and did a good job. He grinned. ‘He was very attached to it. Someone said they’d find it for him.’
Joanna picked up on that. Someone said they’d find it for him.
‘Who?’
‘One of the nurses.’
‘Which one?’
And suddenly, without warning, the look of confusion dropped over his face like a fog. Whatever information he might or might not have, it had drifted away, invisible, irretrievable.
The sense of frustration was acute for Joanna, and for Mr Dean, who looked anguished. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘It’s all right.’
Joanna kept her frown for the manager. ‘Do you have an inventory of Mr Foster’s clothes, Miss Golding?’
‘I, erm – I – believe so.’
‘Would he have been wearing pyjamas?’
‘I believe so but I’ll have to check with the nurses.’ It was proving a useful phrase.
‘A dressing gown?’ Her eyes flew to the hook on the back of the door where hung two dressing gowns.
‘A coat?’
Ms Golding opened the wardrobe door, rummaged around and changed her phrase to, ‘I believe so.’
Joanna glanced beneath the bed, piecing together a sequence. Their missing man had put his coat on. He’d planned to go outside to search for Teddy. ‘And on his feet?’
The manager’s eyes also dropped to the floor beneath the missing man’s bed. No slippers.
She looked back at Joanna who picked up the story. ‘So it seems that Mr Foster left your home wearing pyjamas, slippers and an overcoat?’
‘I’ll check and let you know for sure.’
‘Thank you.’ Joanna was temporarily diverted by PC Anderton rifling through the drawers. ‘Found anything, Bridget?’
She held up a plastic fawn behind-the-ear National Health hearing aid, still with a coating of dark earwax.
So their man was going to be hard of hearing, had poor sight, was inadequately dressed.
‘Anything more?’
Bridget shook her head and kept up her search around the room.
Joanna kept her eyes on Ms Golding, who was still managing to look affronted, as though all this was way beneath her. Almost as though this whole scenario was the fault of the police rather than due to a lack of vigilance of the staff. Always nice if you can shift the blame for your own omissions on to someone else.
Bridget spoke up. ‘I take it he hasn’t got a suitcase?’
‘No.’
Which set Joanna picturing Paddington Bear. She smiled and patted her abdomen.
Did Zachary Foster pack a bag ready to flit and somehow sneak out unseen through locked doors? Not if his dementia was as severe as she’d been led to believe.
And if it wasn’t?
She tried out another scenario. What if the picture of a confused old man in an overcoat, pyjamas and slippers, wandering, apparently unseen, through the streets of Leek, searching for a lost teddy bear, was fantasy rather than fact? She shook her head. It didn’t fit. Someone would have seen him. The truth was nothing fitted. She was having trouble fitting any picture into a frame.
If he had turned left out of the home, headed out towards the bleak and high ground of the moors, there would have been less chance of him being spotted. But if anyone had seen him out there, an old man wandering around in pyjamas, slippers and an overcoat, they would have picked him up.
Something else occurred to her. Zachary Foster had no relatives, and that meant not only no refuge for him to head to, but equally no one who would kick up a fuss at his disappearance.
‘I will need that confirmation of what Mr Foster would have been wearing,’ she said. This time she would not mince her words. ‘The weather is cold. He’s a vulnerable person under your care and you’re bound to be held responsible.’
Sandie Golding had got the hint all right. Her face paled as she nodded, humbled now. ‘I’ll ask the matron,’ she said finally.
Joanna turned back to Alf. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Dean.’ She shook his hand, feeling he looked so eager she should be saying something more to him – that he’d helped – or something else positive. But he hadn’t. Not really. It seemed as though Alf felt something was missing too. His expression was still expectant. Joanna was tempted to give him a pat on the head, like an obedient collie, but sufficed with a nod, finishing with, ‘And if you think of anything else, Mr Dean, let one of the nurses know and they’ll pass on any information.’
‘I will. I will.’
She took a last look around the room and tried to visualize the scene: sometime during the night, an old man, sliding his feet into his slippers, crossing the room, opening the wardrobe, taking out his coat and leaving the room to move invisibly and silently down the stairs to the French windows in the day room, somehow magic his way through the doors, out on to the terrace, walk down the drive – and vanish.
And as they left she still felt she was missing some important part of the story.
That feeling persisted as she stood in the doorway and then it morphed into something more specific. Rather than having missed something, it was more that she had glossed over something she should have paid more attention to. She stood still, tried to recapture it, failed. As they left the room, Alf Dean was still watching them from his bed; she was tempted to turn back, start again, take another look, listen harder to the responses to her questions. But she didn’t. And she wasn’t any nearer piecing the information together. So instead she focused back on the manager. ‘Now I need to have a look at both your front and back doors and the French windows, as well as any other exits you might have. And if you can let me have the contact details of your three night staff as soon as possible, and anyone else who feels they might be able to help us find your missing patient …’
‘Certainly.’ This time there was no mistaking the haughtiness in her tone or the square of her shoulders as she marched ahead.