‘Alex,’ Maggie cried, astonishment in eyes. ‘What are you talking about? Who phoned you? What woman in your car park? I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about!’
Nearly an hour later, after Alex had brought her up to date on everything that was happening, Maggie sat still and silent.
‘So, what do you think now?’ Alex asked in a tired voice. ‘Still all in my head?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘I don’t know. What I mean is I don’t know if it’s all related. The call and this message on your car are clearly real. Was anyone with you when the call came?’
‘Yes,’ Alex sighed heavily. ‘Fiona, but she didn’t hear what he said.’
‘And the police?’
‘They haven’t got back to me about the call. They think the message on my car was a prank.’
‘So that leaves a woman knocked down in your car park, who you found dying?’
Alex nodded. ‘Yes. The poor woman died horribly.’
‘And you didn’t see it happen or the person who did it?’
‘No,’ Alex replied miserably. ‘I drove down the ramp and she was just lying there in my parking space. I didn’t see any cars leaving. The gates were open, but no car passed me. I .?.?. God, Maggie, I’m so stupid!’ Her mouth dropped open and her eyes stared into space. ‘My fob! My lost fob. The gates were already open when I got home. They’re electric and can only be opened with a fob. I didn’t lose it! It must have been taken! I need to report this to the police. Not that I think they’ll believe me. I think they think I knocked her down.’
Maggie looked worried. ‘Christ, Alex, do you need to talk to a lawyer?’
‘No!’ Alex said sharply. ‘I tried to save her!’
Maggie raised her hands in placating manner. ‘OK. So that now leaves Amy Abbott. Well I’m sad to say that yes, I can imagine a woman doing this. Every day women are swallowing potions or inserting pessaries to induce abortion, even in countries where abortion is legal. And they don’t always work. Amy Abbott was a qualified nurse and perhaps she felt confident enough in her knowledge to do what she did.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ Alex said firmly. ‘She was telling me something! I know she was, because I was there. On an operating table! Waiting to die!’
‘Were you? How were you there? How is it possible you were there?’
‘He knocked me out, anaesthetised me. He gagged me with a cloth and knocked me unconscious.’
Maggie let out a deep sigh. She briefly shook her head as if trying to dislodge an annoying thought. ‘The old rag anaesthetic trick is a cheesy Hollywood invention,’ she said slowly and succinctly. ‘You’d need a Schimmelbusch mask at the very least, a long time, some ether, and to be there continually to make it work—’
‘He had a Schimmelbusch!’
‘Out in the car park, Alex! I’m talking about out in the car park! You’d have been struggling to get away, even if he managed to knock you down. He would have to get you flat on your back, hold the mask over your face, drip ether through it for a long while, and all the time this is going on he would be out in the open for anyone to see.’
Alex’s heart was thumping. Maggie was saying things she didn’t want to hear. ‘You’re saying it’s impossible?’
‘I’m saying it didn’t happen that way.’
Chapter twenty-six
Nathan heard the telephone ring just as he covered his face in shaving foam. He considered not answering it – it was the third call he’d received in the last hour and he had no doubt it would be the nursing home again, with more instructions from his mother.
In a carrier bag on his bed he had already packed her ancient button-through dressing gown, a collection of Catherine Cookson audiotapes and her smelling salts. His mother seldom went far without them, and was probably panicking about the small brown bottle. She always carried smelling salts in her cardigan pocket and a cotton hankie tucked up one sleeve.
As a child he had lived with the odour of ammonia on the cotton hankies she used to wipe his face– his eyes had watered when the material touched his face. And he was always left with a guilty feeling because the restorative medicine was only used when he had caused an upset. Smelling salts and her cries of woe were the memories of his childhood. Could he not behave better? Could he not be more thoughtful, be less selfish? What she’d really meant, but was never quite cruel enough to voice, was could he not learn to hide the one side of his face?
The phone stopped ringing, and, relieved by the sudden silence, he quickly shaved and then dressed in preparation for the visit. Today he would sit on her stroke side so that she didn’t have to see his face.
Ten minutes later the phone rang again, and, stifling his impatience, he went to answer it. Alex Taylor said hello and for a moment he was lost for words.
‘Nathan, can you hear me?’ she shouted now.
‘Yes. You caught me by surprise. I was expecting someone else.’
‘I erm .?.?. noticed you have the day off.’
Briefly he wondered, and then half-hoped, if she was going to ask him to cover her shift. It would give him a legitimate reason to get out of the visit to his mother.
‘Well, I’m off as well and I wondered, if you didn’t have plans and were at a loose end, if maybe we could do something together. You know .?.?. erm .?.?.’ She gave a rushed, girlish laugh. ‘I thought we could do something fun.’
Immediately, ideas formed in his mind about how to extricate himself from the visit to his mother. He could ring the nursing home and say he’d been called in to an emergency. ‘I, well, that is—’
‘I’m meeting Seb Morrisey this afternoon. You know Seb, don’t you? I thought perhaps you might like to join us?’
The disappointment was like a slap, and in the mirror above the mantel the pale side of his face flushed. She obviously felt she owed him a favour for supporting her over the last few weeks and was offering to share some of her and Seb’s day with him. ‘I’m sorry Alex, but I’m not—’
‘It’ll be fun as long as you can put up with me in the driver’s seat.’ He sensed a false note and now he cringed. She felt sorry for him. This was why she was calling. She was like all the others, they all just felt sorry for him. He had been hoping for so much more from her. She was different, he had been sure. From the moment he met her he had wanted her to look at him and see him as normal, and now he found himself bitterly disappointed.
‘Alex, I’m sorry to be blunt, but why are you calling me?’ He sensed her shock and quickly spoke again. ‘It’s not a good idea. Thank you all the same, but I already have plans for the day.’
Her goodbye was rushed and filled with embarrassment, and he knew he should feel apologetic for his rudeness, but he didn’t. Several minutes later he was still standing by the phone, staring bitterly at his reflection in the mirror and wondering, not for the first time, why his mother hadn’t suffocated him at birth. He was a freak and it would have been kinder to put him out of his misery. But then if she had done, Cecilia Bell would not have been able to live her life as a martyr – an expression often used by her friends when they rallied round her as she took her smelling salts.