A Small Weeping by Alex Gray

a small, stout auxiliary with dark hair.
    ‘Morning, Phyllis,’ she swept a practised eye over the bedclothes, resting for a moment on the patient’s face. Phyllis was heaved into a sitting position to participate in the ritual of blood pressure, temperature and removal of her bodily wastes. She watched, detached, as if it was happening to someone else. She endured the harsh wet flannel on her face and body while the two women carried on an earlier conversation as if she wasn’t there.
    ‘Did you see her being carried away?’
    ‘Sh!’ the nurse frowned at her, nodding her head towards Phyllis, belatedly acknowledging her presence.
    ‘Oh. Right. Och, she’ll never know. Will you, darling?’ she smiled a pasted-on smile in Phyllis’s direction.
    Phyllis closed her eyes as the hook pulled up the sling and raised her off the bed. Below her the two women pulled at the sheets, dashing the soiled linen onto the floor then smoothing on the fresh bedding with an expertise born of much practise. At last she was lowered back onto the cool sheet and the perpetually moving mattress. The ritual was completed by the auxiliary spraying the air with the scent of roses.
    For a while this would serve to mask the unpleasantsmell of human urine. Left alone, Phyllis watched the spray, like mist catching the light as it fell. Her day could now begin. The sky with its ever-shifting shapes was there to see; and imagination, if not memory, would people her hours.
    Now she could banish the memory of that nightmare in the dark. She closed her eyes but heard again the cry that had left her shivering. Had she really seen that shadow of malice falling against the cupboards outside her room? And those hands reaching to pluck a flower from her vase? No one would ever know what she had seen.

Chapter Ten
    Lorimer stood outside the front entrance to the Grange, watching as Niall Cameron approached, recalling their conversation of the night before. He had found the detective constable leaning against the side of the building, head pressed against his arms. Lorimer had wondered at the sound in the dark until he realised the young man was sobbing quietly.
    ‘I knew her, sir. She’s a girl from back home,’ Cameron had told him, his face streaked with tears. ‘She’s Kirsty MacLeod. We grew up together. She was in my wee sister’s year at the Nicholson.’
    Lorimer had guided him towards the car where he’d heard the rest of the story. How Niall Cameron had left Lewis to join the police force against his family’s wishes. How they’d wanted him to take over his late father’s fishing boat but Niall hadn’t seen a future there anymore. Now there was only his mother at home with the youngest one. All the others had left. Kirsty had come to the city too, but he’d never seen her. Until now.
    ‘Should I come off the case, sir?’ Cameron had wanted to know. But Lorimer had shaken his head. Some background knowledge would be useful.
    Now the DC was closer Lorimer could see his bloodshot eyes, signs of a sleepless night. Well, it happened to them all in this profession. Young Niall Cameron had better get used to it.
    ‘OK?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Talk to anyone from home yet?’
    Cameron nodded. ‘There’s only one next of kin, the old auntie who lives in Harris. Kirsty’s mother died of cancer when the lassie was twelve. Her dad was drowned some time back.’
    ‘Right. We’ll probably find out more now from the director, Mrs Baillie. She lives on the premises. We only took a preliminary statement last night but there’ll have to be proper interviews this morning. Alistair’s here already, setting up an incident room.’
    Some things were better done in daylight, thought Lorimer. There was a team of uniformed officers doing a house-to-house inquiry along the road. It was a residential district with not a close circuit television camera in sight. They’d have to rely on the local insomniacs for any sighting of the killer. Last night had