had plied Bob with more cups of tea than a man with apparently hollow legs could possibly want to consume. She was on her fourth herself, hot and sweet and entirely useless for managing shock, but a good alternative to sitting and dwelling on who might want to launch rocks at her. Sarah had sprung to mind, but it couldn’t be – and, given the circumstances, it should be Maura casting the first stone at her. Richard was long gone; besides, he’d already done her as much harm as it was possible to do and even he couldn’t rise from the dead. Whatever this was, it didn’t have anything to do with her. As she faffed with the tea things, she hoped it was a one-off, a chancy kid letting off steam or a stroppy drunk who’d taken a wrong turn on the way home and decided to have a pop at the posh folk. Thank God for Bob and his willingness to turn out in the dead of night and come to the rescue. He was hardly a knight in shining armour, more a dishevelled old codger with a five o’clock shadow, a missing ear that she was dying to ask about but didn’t feel she should, and a distinct lack of wit, but he was there and Maura was glad of him. ‘Tea’s on the table. I’d better go and check on Himself.’
Gordon Henderson had slept through it all, or so it appeared. He didn’t even stir when she let herself into the room and allowed the light from the hallway to stray onto his face. Not that she wanted to wake him; she just needed to check he was still breathing. Any man who could sleep through windows breaking, nurses screaming, police banging on the door and Bob hammering was either drugged or dead. Maura was relieved to see that it was the former – Mr Henderson had been well and truly smacked with the chemical cosh. Under the circumstances it was probably a good thing, but Maura couldn’t help thinking she’d given an awful lot of drugs to a very frail man. It occurred to her that she’d have to talk to Dr Moss about what had been prescribed for Gordon; there were enough pills in his medicine reminder to restock a branch of Boots and it was only a week’s supply. Moss wasn’t going to like being questioned, but his ego came second to her duty of care.
Satisfied the old man was still in the land of the living (and that she wouldn’t have to report she’d not only allowed an assault on the house, but had also allowed her charge to die on her first evening), she gently closed the door and replaced the chain. The adrenaline rush that had fuelled the aftermath of the incident had long worn off and she was exhausted. There would be little chance of sleep with Bob hammering away in the kitchen, and she didn’t relish the thought of him going back to his own cosy bed and leaving her on her own either. Sleep deprivation and Bob’s noisy presence were preferable to even a few hours alone in a house that was giving her the distinct impression it didn’t like her.
Tiredness was making her irrational and making her doubt her decision to take the job, let alone whether she was willing to stay. It was just a house – a big, old, ugly house that made horrible noises, but just a house – and it had a resident incapable of caring for himself. Maybe if Bob was willing to stay she could get a few hours’ sleep and wake up with her sensible head on?
Bob did stay, on a sofa in one of the downstairs rooms, his snores punching their way through the early morning and drowning out the birdsong to the point where Maura gave up on any thought of sleep and made her way back downstairs. She was battling Gordon over the state of his porridge when Cheryl’s less than dulcet tones broke the uneasy peace.
‘What in hell’s name happened to my kitchen?’ Cheryl demanded. ‘And why is Bob Silver asleep on the morning-room sofa?’
Maura had anticipated Cheryl’s anger, but not the thread of panic that wound through her voice, tightening the shrill voice to a screech.
At that moment Gordon decided to tip the contents of his breakfast bowl onto the tray. ‘Porridge should be a solid thing, not this slop. Look at it!’
Maura did look, staring with exhaustion and exasperation at the mess he was prodding with a bony finger. ‘I’ll make some more, Mr Henderson.’
‘Too late, too late. I eat at the right time, no later. I cannot eat past my time.’
Maura was operating on nerves as taut as catgut and a level of sleep deprivation that a KGB torturer would have been proud of. ‘I’m very sorry, I’ll take it away,’ she said, aware that Cheryl stood behind her bristling with impatience. This whole scenario was turning into something surreal and faintly ridiculous. Maura felt herself about to snap, pack her bags and leave.
In the hallway Cheryl gave the tray a snide look. ‘Well?’
‘Someone threw a rock through the kitchen window last night. Bob came here to fix it, but we had to wait for the police, so by the time they’d come and he’d boarded it up, it was getting pretty late. I asked him to stay because, to be quite frank with you, Cheryl, I was cacking myself. It was my first night, someone lobbed a rock at me, and I didn’t want to be here on my own. As for the porridge, I’ve never made it from scratch in my life. I’m a nurse, not a cook, so forgive me if it’s not up to anyone’s cordon bleu standards.’
Cheryl’s untidy eyebrows rose, almost meeting her frizzy fringe. ‘All right, keep your hair on! There’s bigger things to worry about than bloody porridge.’
Maura gave her the filthiest look she could muster and stalked towards the baize door. What the hell was she doing in a house that had a bloody baize door for Christ’s sake? As she strode towards the kitchen she felt as though she’d been badly cast in the Mark Gatiss version of Upstairs Downstairs. Life in the Grange was like being an unwilling participant in some demonic episode of a B-grade dystopian time slip farce. Any minute now, some weirdo in a blue police box would turn up and rescue them all if she was lucky.
Cheryl took her time joining her and, by the time she arrived, Maura was scrubbing the last of the congealed porridge from the pan, wincing as the cuts on her hands sang with soreness inside the rubber gloves.
‘Look, I’m sorry, all right? I think we got off on the wrong foot. My mouth runs away with me and I speak before I think sometimes. I don’t mean to be nasty, it’s just my way. I’ve seen to his nibs and had a chat with Bob, so, why don’t you go and lie down for a bit, get some sleep, eh?’ She nodded at the washing-up. ‘I’ll see to that.’
Maura hadn’t been expecting that, and to her shame tears started to prickle at the corners of her eyes – her anger was so easily replaced by upset these days. What she wanted to do was hurl the dirty pan across the kitchen, pack her bag and leave, but she was dropping with tiredness and it wasn’t an option at that moment. Instead she set the pan on the draining board and turned to Cheryl, finding that the woman’s face looked more menacing with its mask of empathy than it did with the more familiar scowl.
‘Thank you. I’ll take a couple of hours if you don’t mind,’ Maura said before walking from the room with limbs that were stiff with self-consciousness. The prospect of festering at home, alone with her brooding bitterness, was increasingly feeling like a more appealing alternative to being stuck with Gordon and his porridge issues, or Cheryl and her mercurial temperament.
Sleeping on the decision and letting it ferment seemed the wise thing to do. If the current occupants and outside assailants would allow her to sleep – what with Cheryl clomping along the landing outside her door and more doors banging in the bowels of the house.
Finally, she heard Bob and Cheryl in the courtyard below, Cheryl telling Bob she was off to get some fresh air, him saying he was going to the sheds to find a glazier’s hammer. Maura was beyond caring what either of them did.
A squirt of deodorant on the sheets had masked the smell of camphor and sheer exhaustion created the illusion of a comfortable mattress. With bones as weary as her spirit Maura finally drifted into a dreamless, heavy sleep.
It took fifteen minutes for everyone who was working on phase three of Essen Fields to down tools and join the throng. They gathered around the JCB, which had been moving earth from one part of the plot to another, close to the border of Essen Grange. Very little time passed before they all agreed in a series of horrified mutters that, yes, that was human skull caught on one of the metal teeth, and yes, someone