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<h2>15</h2>
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<p>"I found him," the ancient woman said. "And he was
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<em>mine</em>."</p>
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<p>Her name was Greta Simon and she sat in the wheelchair in the
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corner of the room, out of the light. Her hair was grey and thin
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she had a shallow indentation, as wide as a tennis ball and maybe
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half an inch deep, on the side of her temple. It gave her face an
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asymmetric, somehow slumped appearance. Her left eye, on the same
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side of the dent, was turned inwards in a violent strabismic squint
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which made her look both cunning and imbecilic all at the same
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time.</p>
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<p>She grinned widely, showing three teeth on the left side. The
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gaps gave her an odd, slavering hiss of speech as if she wore ill
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fitting dentures. Her hands hugged herself constantly as if making
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sure she was truly there.</p>
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<p>"I loved him and I looked after him all the time," she said.
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David had to bend forward to hear. "Little Tim. <em>Little Tiny
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Tim</em>. He was mine you know. I had him and I fed him. All the
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time. He never stopped eating. Brought me out in bruises, he did,
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but I never minded that."</p>
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<p>She looked up at David Harper, though with her improbable
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squint, he couldn't be sure exactly what she was looking at. He
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kept a fix on her right eye to be certain. It looked the most
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likely.</p>
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<p>This was Greta Simon who had almost been killed by the lorry
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that day on Duncryne Bridge, the day Heather McDougall had decided
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to go up the valley to join her dead friend. She was old and frail
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and wandered, yet there was a strange life in her good eye, a
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peculiar, almost mischievous and somehow sly intelligence inside
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that deformed head.</p>
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<p>"You can go and see her," Phil Cutcheon had told him. "I spoke
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to her once or twice after the case and she's wandered all right,
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but there's more to her than you'd think."</p>
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<p>The former detective had poured neat cups of strong coffee in
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the heated conservatory that let in the weak winter sunshine which
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together with the greenery and the winter flowering blooms, made it
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feel like a warm day in spring.</p>
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<p>"Still miss the job," he said. "Miss the cut and thrust. You get
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used to it and when you stop, it's as if you've had the feet cut
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from under you. Mark my words, you've a long way to go, but make
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sure you've got things to do by the time you're ready to take the
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pension. I've got my garden and the bowling club, but I miss the
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thinking, the real concentration."</p>
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<p>He sat back and looked straight at David, much as Greta Simon
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would do later, though Cutcheon had the direct look that all
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policemen seem to develop. The power look.</p>
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<p>"You've got yourself a mystery, same as I had. And there was an
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old beat man back in the forties who had the same thing. It's got
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me beat and it'll have you beat too, but there's no harm in you
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ploughing the same furrow. If you turned up something, I'd be glad
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of it. I always thought that driver should never have gone to jail.
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Not in a million years. But he had a cretin for a lawyer and there
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was nothing I could do but report the facts. From the looks of
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things, he was going too fast, from the skid marks anyway, but I
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would have said it was a borderline case. As far as the baby was
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concerned, we spent a lot of man hours looking for it and never
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turned up anything at all. What got me was that he was wrapped in a
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shawl when he went over the bridge and that never showed up
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neither. You'd have thought it would have got snagged in the bushes
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or the brambles down on the side of the valley. Take a walk up
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there and have a look, it hasn't changed in all those years."</p>
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<p>"I already did," David said. The coffee was strong and thick and
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he could feel his pulse speed up almost instantly. "It's pretty
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steep."</p>
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<p>"Yes. Right down to the Witches Pots. I used to play there as a
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boy, you know. Good place to swim, but damned cold, even in the
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summer. If the baby had fallen in there, it would have drowned and
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died of cold pretty quickly. But I always had my doubts, because
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even as a boy I knew that anything that landed in the pool tended
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to stay there, even when the river was in spate. Devanney, the
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driver, he was no use. He said the woman came running out into the
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middle of the road. There might have been somebody else there at
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the time, but he couldn't be sure and anyway he was in such a state
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of shock that we couldn't get a word out of him for hours. He
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worked for Carnwath Hauliers and there was a lot of bad feeling at
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the time. They were a cowboy outfit and they pushed their drivers
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too hard. There had been a couple of accidents before this and that
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was why it was easy to get a conviction, but as I said, it was a
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borderline case and to tell you the truth, the road up there's
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quiet enough for anybody to hear a truck coming a mile off. It was
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as much her fault, in my opinion, as his."</p>
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<p>"So what do you think happened?"</p>
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<p>"Christ alone knows. I was never completely sure there was a
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baby on the bridge, though Greta Simon did have a kid at some
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stage, at least to look after. There were enough witnesses
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testifying to that, but nobody knew <em>whose</em> baby it was. She
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was in a coma for weeks and once she came out of it she was as mad
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as a hatter. She'll still tell you she had a baby boy and half of
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the time she still thinks she's got one. But it's a mystery all
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right and it's not one of my clearest memories of my time on the
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force. Devanney should never have gone to jail on the basis of the
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evidence. That baby was never found, and there was no clear proof
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that it was there, despite the wreck of the pram on the road at the
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bridge. Greta was a bit crazy before the accident anyway. The court
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decided there must have been a baby and it must have died and that
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was that. We searched her place from top to bottom and found plenty
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of new kiddies clothes and toys, and a cot that had never been
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used. To me that wasn't conclusive, but I had to go ahead and make
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my report</p>
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<p>"That's what we found at Heather McDougall's place."</p>
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<p>"And it stank to high heaven too, as if she'd been keeping cats
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or some kind of animal. There was a smell that would have burned
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your eyes out."</p>
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<p>"Snap."</p>
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<p>"We didn't hear about McDougall until the following day, if my
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memory serves me. To tell you the truth, I never linked the two
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cases, for there was never any pointers to show she'd gone up to
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Duncryne. I think maybe it's a coincidence."</p>
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<p>"There's plenty of them, that's for sure. That's why I came to
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have a chat. Mr Bulloch sends his regards by the way. He says you
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and he worked together."</p>
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<p>"More years ago than I care to remember. He's done well for
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himself, young Bulloch. Got some distance to go too, I believe."
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The big ex-policeman sat back with his coffee, looking over the cup
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at David, his grey and grizzled eyebrows drawn down. He was tall,
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but broad enough to disguise his height. He must have been a
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formidable policeman in his day, David thought. The blue eyes were
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still clear and bright. They measured everything.</p>
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<p>"Anyway, what you tell he has got me interested again, though I
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promised Maisie, that's my wife, that I wouldn't open any more
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cases. After I left, there were still one or two loose ends to tie
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up, but after a while you just sit back and let other people get on
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with it. That's what they're paid for, and the last thing they want
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is an old has-been breathing down their necks."</p>
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<p>He grinned widely. "But you do need something to keep the brain
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cells alive, so any help you need, I'm your man."</p>
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<p>"It's the coincidences that puzzle me," David said. "From what I
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understand, we've got two missing babies, yet nobody knows where
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they came from. If the McDougall women's diaries are accurate,
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there's probably more than two. Maybe as many as four, because the
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diaries span a long time. I can't tell you if these kids were
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begged borrowed or stolen, but I do know that Heather McDougall
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never gave birth.</p>
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<p>"And neither did Greta Simon. When you go down to Blairdyke
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Hospital they'll tell you that. She'd never had a child of her own,
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so she was looking after one for somebody else or she'd done some
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sort of fostering deal that nobody knew about. That used to happen
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now and again. I went through all the records at the time to find
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out if maybe a child had been reported missing but even then that
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would have been big news. You have to remember, the pressure was on
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me at the time to clear up the Quigley murder. Back then, a murder
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took precedence over an accident, no matter how serious, and I was
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pretty thinly stretched at the time and so were my team. The
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Quigley case was a mess from start to finish. No matter though, we
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did our best to find the baby, but nothing turned up."</p>
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<p>"And you think there was no baby?"</p>
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<p>"Oh, there was a baby at some stage. Nobody knew whether it was
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a boy or a girl. Later on Greta said it was a boy, but by that time
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she was howling at the moon. There was a baby, but I am not
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convinced it went over the parapet and down the ravine. We would
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have found something. People said they saw somebody else on the
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bridge. We never got an identity, but there could have been
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somebody with Greta Simon. Who knows?"</p>
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<p>"Somebody said maybe a fox had taken it. That or a dog."</p>
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<p>"We had tracker dogs all over there. They'd have picked up
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something, but there was nothing. All we could do was make a report
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and the prosecution decided to take it all the way. It was a
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railroad job, but I'm a policeman, or I used to be. I don't make
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the rules. There was nothing I could do."</p>
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<p>He sat back and steepled his thick fingers together. "I spent a
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lot of time thinking about this later, and I can see you'll be
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doing the same. What I came up with was something I couldn't
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fathom. It's always been at the back of my mind, but I never really
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took it further. I think maybe I made a mistake, from what you've
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told me. I might owe somebody a posthumous apology. Later on, if
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you want, I can get you more information, but I have to tell you,
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it's a case of history repeating itself, and that's something I
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don't like to see."</p>
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<p>"I'm not with you," David admitted.</p>
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<p>"From what you've told me, you've an almost identical case and
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it's come too close to this old one. Heather McDougall came from
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here and she disappeared at the same time as the baby. Now there
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may be a gap of thirty years or so, but it's too weird. You didn't
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know that Greta Simon herself disappeared as well, way back in the
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forties, did you?"</p>
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<p>David shook his head.</p>
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<p>"Well, it's true. She came from somewhere across the other side
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of the country. Kirkland, Levenford, around that neck of the woods.
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Back then, during the war, there was a lot of movement, and there
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was plenty of bombing down there on Clydeside, so people went
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missing all the time. It wasn't until we really looked into the
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case that we found her name on the files and in her bag she still
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had her old wartime identity card. Until then, nobody really knew
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who she was or where she was from. Now you've got the same thing.
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Greta Simon, Heather McDougall, and now your Marsden girl. It's a
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hell of a set of coincidences, isn't it?"</p>
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<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
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<p>"I'm not the first to come up with the notion that it was all
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too pat. I heard something like this before, a long time ago,
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before your time. Before Donal Bulloch's time in fact, but I never
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gave it any credence before. Now I wonder if I was wrong. Maybe
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there's some sort of virus that makes women steal children."</p>
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<p>"I'm still not with you."</p>
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<p>"No. I didn't think you would be," Phil Cutcheon said, sitting
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back in his seat and running a hand through his grizzled hair.
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"Tell you what. You go down to Blairdyke Hospital. Mike Fitzgibbon,
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he's the senior man there, I'll give him a call and he'll let you
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talk to Greta Simon. You can see for yourself what she'd like. Once
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you've done that, come back to me and I'll see what I can do.
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You've whetted my appetite and there's bugger-all to be done in the
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greenhouse at this time of the year."</p>
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<p>Dr Fitzgibbon was tall and spare, with receding ginger-coloured
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hair cut very short and wearing octagonal glasses which gave him a
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hard and heartless look, but he'd a wide and friendly smile which
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transformed the initial impression. He had narrow shoulders from
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which a while coat drooped. It flapped behind him as he walked down
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the straight corridor which was painted in that shade of green they
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save for public institutions as if it's a legal requirement to be
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as dismal and depressing as possible.</p>
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<p>"Old Phil Cutcheon called me," he said. "It's a shame he's not
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still on the force. He knows more psychology than some of the
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dough-heads and wide boys here. He can spot a faker a mile off.
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Don't ever tell him a lie or he'll have your guts."</p>
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<p>David promised he wouldn't. Mike Fitzgibbon insisted on using
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first names and led David to a small, neat office with views over a
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regimented garden.</p>
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<p>"Greta Simon. One of our enduring mysteries is old Greta. I've
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been here for fifteen years and I still haven't a clue, but you're
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welcome to talk to her. She can be friendly when she chooses, and
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then again, she sometimes doesn't say a word for weeks. It depends
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on the moon or whether it's raining, or if she heard a blackbird
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after dinner. I know her case bugged the hell out of Superintendent
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Cutcheon and I can quite understand that."</p>
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<p>He crossed to the wall and opened the second drawer of a grey
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filing cabinet and brought out a thick folder. "These are just the
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basics. There's a bundle of case notes going way back, but there's
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no harm in giving you the brief history."</p>
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<p>Mike opened the file and took out a sheaf of official looking
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papers. To David they looked very much like police report
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forms.</p>
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<p>"Greta Simon. Presented July 27 1967 at Blane Hospital, aged
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approximately sixty. Suffering multiple fractures and a massive
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depressed fracture of the skull following a road accident. That
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much you know already."</p>
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<p>"Badly injured?"</p>
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<p>"Appalling. She'd got twenty pins in her legs. Pelvis was
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compacted and both knee-joints shattered. The surgeons considered
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amputation, but because of the head injury they thought she might
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not survive. It was a miracle that she did." The doctor went down
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the list. "The coma lasted approximately five weeks after which she
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needed intensive therapy. The damage was to the left side of the
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head, affecting the temporal lobe. She suffered paralysis of the
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right side, facial distortion and speech dysfunction which is quite
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common in injuries of this nature as well as in stroke and
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haemorrhage victims."</p>
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<p>Mike looked up. "Those were the injuries. She didn't talk for
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six months, maybe seven. But there were other interesting aspects
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to the case. We had her aged approximately sixty. To all outward
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appearance, from bone structure and composition, she was that age.
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It turned out she was nearer fifty, but that's by the way. What did
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surprise the team at Blane was the fact that she was still
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lactating."</p>
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<p>"Lactating?" David asked. The word made him sit up straight in
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his seat.</p>
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<p>"Yes. Producing milk."</p>
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<p>"Yeah, I know. I was just surprised." In fact he could hardly
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believe what the doctor had said. It was another coincidence. A
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huge coincidence. Another one was about to fall his way.</p>
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<p>"And menstruating." Mike Fitzgibbon said, reading from the
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notes. "Very unusual. Dr Tvedt made particular reference to both.
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He'd have loved to have done a post mortem, I can tell from his
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notes. Just a shame she didn't die." Mike gave a grin, wide and
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natural. "He was an old bugger. Horrible swine of a man. Somebody
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did a post mortem on him last year. Liver failure. Too much arm
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bending. He liked his brandy."</p>
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<p>The young doctor went back to the notes. "Anyway, she wasn't
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expected to live, not with her injuries. The worst of all was the
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skull damage and naturally there was collateral brain injury. She
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had three clots under the surface of the cerebrum, one of them
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quite massive. That's what caused the speech dysfunction of course
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and the lateral paralysis. The neuro team managed to partially
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raise the depressed fracture to remove some of the pressure on the
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meninges, that's the membrane covering the brain."</p>
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<p>David nodded. He'd read enough post mortem reports, or listened
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to them in murder trials, to have a fair working knowledge of the
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terminology.</p>
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<p>"And on the brain itself. What was remarkable was that the clots
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dissipated very quickly, without the use of anti-coagulant.
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Normally we'd try to break up a major blockage and hope it
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dissolved before further damage is caused to the blood supply.
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Nobody was sure of what caused that spontaneous dissolution, but
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Tvedt was convinced it had something to do with the presence of
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unusual antibodies in her blood.</p>
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<p>David raised his head. "What was unusual?"</p>
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<p>Mike quickly scanned through the notes, though it was obvious
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he'd read them a dozen times or more. "There was quite a range.
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They couldn't make out whether they were defences against bacteria
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or virus, and remember this was back in the sixties. Things have
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moved on since then. It seemed that she'd been exposed to some
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infection, some invasion before the accident and her body had
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either produced antibodies, or these large protein structures had
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been introduced from the outside."</p>
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<p>"So what were they?"</p>
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<p>Mike shrugged. "Nobody knows."</p>
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<p>"Haven't they been checked recently? You said things have moved
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on since then."</p>
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<p>"Sure they have. We're mapping the human genome and we've
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techniques to identify specific antibodies, even down to their
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protein coats. But that was then and this is now. About six months
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after she arrived in Blane, there was no sign of them at all. Tvedt
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had thought there was a never-ending supply in Greta's bloodstream,
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but he was wrong. Oh, he should have kept samples, but he didn't
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and there was no way his people could induce her to produce the
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antibodies."</p>
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<p>"What made them disappear?"</p>
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<p>"Who knows. Some believe that we've got every antibody to every
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disease since life crawled out of the swamp, a sort of biological
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array of defences that are triggered into production to counter
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every threat. What really kills us is the emergence of new
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varieties and there's new ones coming along all the time. More and
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more since man in his wisdom is getting down to serious genetics.
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Anyway, Greta, it would seem, had produced these complex molecules
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as a defence, or as an inhibitor. When the threat was gone, her
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body simply turned off the supply. It's unusual for the human
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immune system to leave no trace once the defences are switched off,
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but not impossible. Tvedt just couldn't recreate the conditions
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because he didn't know what had switched them on in the first
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place."</p>
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<p>Mike closed the file. "After about five weeks, she woke, which
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came as a surprise to everybody, and her injuries started to mend.
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They did a radio-opaque scan of her brain and found the clotting
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gone, though there was still scarring at the source of impact. Her
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speech aphasia was apparent for a year or more, though she hardly
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talked at all. She had motor dysfunction and severe pedal handicap
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because of the muscle and bone injury to the pelvic area. Apart
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from that there was nothing much wrong with her except...."</p>
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<p>David nodded him on.</p>
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<p>"Except the brain damage was not merely confined to motor and
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speech function. It left her permanently disabled, and that's why
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she's here at Blairdyke. She's been variously diagnosed, but in a
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nutshell, he's got the mental age of a girl of seven. That's just
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one aspect of the brain injury.</p>
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<p>"From time to time she exhibits varying symptoms of catalepsy,
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grand and petit mal."</p>
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<p>"She throws fits?"</p>
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<p>"As you say. She throws fits." Mike smiled, but not
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condescendingly. "While there is no clinical evidence, either
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chemical or hormonal, she displays evidence of schizophrenia, which
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could be attributed to new synapse pathways forming but not
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connecting properly. She talks to herself. She believes she is
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possessed. She occasionally believes she has a baby."</p>
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<p>David sat back. Coincidence was piling upon coincidence.</p>
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<p>"Does anybody know whether she ever <em>had</em> a baby?"</p>
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<p>"I'm no pathologist. I'm a psychologist. But no, she never did.
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Her clinical notes show that she presented with adhesions on both
|
|
fallopian tubes. One of these turned out to be a tumour which was
|
|
removed in the early seventies. Initially her ovaries were grossly
|
|
distended and fully functional. In fact they were unnaturally
|
|
active, even for a woman half her age. They were producing vast
|
|
amounts of hormone when she was first admitted and there was some
|
|
suspicion that this had been caused by damage to the pituitary
|
|
gland, though there was never any proof. What I'm saying is that
|
|
she was hormonally fertile, but physically sterile."</p>
|
|
<p>"Was she a virgin?"</p>
|
|
<p>"No. But she never had a baby, not one of her own. Shortly after
|
|
admission, at least within the first six months, the overpoduction
|
|
of progesterone and oestrogen slowed and then failed completely.
|
|
She entered menopause almost overnight. That possibly didn't help
|
|
her mental condition, but again, that was before my time. I was
|
|
still in school."</p>
|
|
<p>"Me to," David said.</p>
|
|
<p>"So what's your interest in our Greta?"</p>
|
|
<p>"I don't know," David said honestly. "I'm following a list of
|
|
coincidences that have me beat, There was a similar case to hers in
|
|
my neck of the woods, somebody who would have interested you, but
|
|
she died."</p>
|
|
<p>"Phil Cutcheon said you might want to speak to her?"</p>
|
|
<p>"Yes. I would," David said. "I don't know what I'm looking for,
|
|
I have to admit, but I'd like to check everything out."</p>
|
|
<p>"You'd make a good doctor," Mike Fitzgibbon said. He stood up
|
|
and opened the door. They went back down the dismal green corridor
|
|
which echoed like a cave, amplifying their footsteps and making
|
|
them reverberate in a shadowy back-beat. At the far end, a narrow
|
|
stairway led down to a lower level where, oddly, the corridor was
|
|
brighter and the windows let on to a small, neatly tended garden
|
|
where winter roses sparkled under a sugaring of frost.</p>
|
|
<p>Half way along, Mike opened a white door. He went in first, and
|
|
beckoned to David to come through. Inside, the spartan room was
|
|
clean and shaded. A pull-down blind came almost to the sill. For a
|
|
moment David's eyes were unaccustomed to the shade but there was
|
|
enough light coming in through the open door for him to see a tiny,
|
|
emaciated woman sitting in a wheelchair, hugging herself tight. She
|
|
shivered in a palsied tremor, the kind of motion he'd seen on
|
|
Heather McDougall's old and ruined father. The eyes at first were
|
|
just as vacant, focused into the far distance or into the far
|
|
past.</p>
|
|
<p>This old woman had lost her mind on the same day that old Callum
|
|
McDougall had lost a daughter. There was a strange symmetry in
|
|
that, an uncanny similarity.</p>
|
|
<p>"Hello Greta," Mike said brightly, walking towards the window.
|
|
He raised the blind, not fully, but enough to let light in so they
|
|
could both see without straining. A shaft of brightness caught the
|
|
old woman's eye and David saw a gleam that could have been anger or
|
|
mischief or complete insanity. She turned her head, still shivering
|
|
slightly, away from the glare. Her hair was faded and sparse,
|
|
showing a pale, mottled scalp. The light cast a shadow that focused
|
|
attention on the shocking depression in the side of her head and
|
|
cast a glint in the eye that was violently turned inward.</p>
|
|
<p>She lifted her head. In the silence of that moment, David heard
|
|
the creak of bone against ligament.</p>
|
|
<p>"Shhh," the woman said, fixing that one eye on the doctor while
|
|
the other one glared madly at the wall on the other side. "You'll
|
|
wake him."</p>
|
|
<p>"Wake who Greta?" Mike Fitzgibbon asked, turning towards David,
|
|
one eyebrow raised.</p>
|
|
<p>"You'll wake the baby, Doctor. You know he needs all his sleep,
|
|
poor wee thing. You'll waken him up again and then we'll never get
|
|
any sleep."</p>
|
|
<p>"What's your baby called, Greta?"</p>
|
|
<p>"Tim. You know that. He's Tiny Tim." She leaned forward and then
|
|
pushed back, rocking slowly. Her wizened, slumped head seemed to
|
|
waver and twist in the half-light. It gave her a gnome-like cast,
|
|
as if her face was trying to change into something else. Despite
|
|
her frailty, it gave David an eerie shiver.</p>
|
|
<p>"I found him you know." She leaned back and the chair quivered.
|
|
"Before. I found him. He wanted me, you know. He cried to me and I
|
|
saved him. He needed me and I needed him."</p>
|
|
<p>The old woman jerked in a sudden start, blinking rapidly, three
|
|
times in succession. She turned round, her good eye wide,
|
|
bewildered, scanning the room. Mike looked at David again.</p>
|
|
<p>"This is what to expect. The alterations between her states are
|
|
inexplicable and very rapid."</p>
|
|
<p>"Where is this place?"</p>
|
|
<p>"You're in the hospital Greta. You know that. And this is David
|
|
who's come to see you."</p>
|
|
<p>The old fluttery hands rubbed up and down against skinny arms,
|
|
sliding scratchily over shoulders that were fleshless and bony.</p>
|
|
<p>"David," she said, voice tremulous and weak. "David. Can you
|
|
find him? I lost him and I can't find him." Greta Simon's mouth was
|
|
twisted to the side and the words were floppy and unfinished. "She
|
|
took him. She took my baby and I can't find him any more and he
|
|
needs me."</p>
|
|
<p>"Who was that?" Mike asked.</p>
|
|
<p>"She did. She came and took him. I saw her." She stiffened and
|
|
twisted her head, making a circling motion that made her look even
|
|
more imbecilic. For a moment there was a silence in the room and
|
|
then the old woman began to hum softly. It was almost inaudible at
|
|
first, like a vocal shudder, low and quavering. Then it came
|
|
louder, not quite in time, but not far out. Hmm-hmm. Hum Hum. Dee
|
|
da. <em>Dee da</em>...</p>
|
|
<p>"<em>I left my baby lying here</em>," the words were wet and
|
|
almost drooling, but comprehensible enough. "<em>I left my baby
|
|
lying here and went to gather blueberries</em>." David recognised
|
|
the song. His own grandmother had sung it to him when he was a
|
|
child. The melody had stayed in his head, buried under his
|
|
experience, under the games and the growing. He hadn't heard the
|
|
tune for twenty years or more. As soon as he recognised it, an
|
|
image of his own mother's face came back to him somehow, not as she
|
|
was now, robust and motherly, but young and red-haired, the way she
|
|
must have been when he was too young to notice her own youth.</p>
|
|
<p>The plaintive unmelodic tune shivered out between those few
|
|
stumps of teeth. "I left my baby lying here."</p>
|
|
<p>David recalled the words of the old song. The baby was taken by
|
|
fairies. They stole babies in the old Gaelic myth. The woman
|
|
stopped rocking. She stopped singing.</p>
|
|
<p>"I left him for a moment. Just a moment on the bridge. I left
|
|
him and she came and took him."</p>
|
|
<p>"Who was that?" David asked. Mike Fitzgibbon leaned against the
|
|
table, his chin cupped in his hands.</p>
|
|
<p>"<em>She</em> did. It made her. I turned round to look at the
|
|
water and she came and took him out of the pram. I tried to stop
|
|
her. I knew what she was doing and I had to get him back."</p>
|
|
<p>"And what happened then?"</p>
|
|
<p>The old woman's good eye went still, seemed to fog over. Her
|
|
brow lifted in an expression of bafflement. Her head twisted to the
|
|
side, as if listening for something, but the bewildered gaze
|
|
remained.</p>
|
|
<p>"She's got no recollection of the accident," the doctor said.
|
|
"That's normal of course. Most of her short term memory is gone
|
|
anyway. Ten minutes from now, she won't remember who you are. Or
|
|
me."</p>
|
|
<p>Greta Simon's palsied, slumped face turned down again very
|
|
slowly and the eye fixed on David again. The fog seemed to clear
|
|
from her eye, as if intelligence of a sort had fled and then
|
|
returned.</p>
|
|
<p>"Where did the baby come from," David tried a different
|
|
thrust.</p>
|
|
<p>"He's mine," she hissed. The life came back into her, though
|
|
there was an eerie mischief in the glint of the eye. The twisted
|
|
pupil caught a shard off light and glittered grotesquely. "He's
|
|
mine, Tiny Tim, Little <em>tiny</em> Tim. That's his name, you
|
|
know. He's so small and perfect and he loves me."</p>
|
|
<p>"Your baby?"</p>
|
|
<p>"He loves me and I feed him." The hands were fluttering back on
|
|
her thin, fleshless shoulders again, hugging herself tight, as if
|
|
she held something close to body. David could imagine a mother
|
|
clutching a child.</p>
|
|
<p>"I found him," she said. "He called to me and I took him. Long
|
|
ago it was." The glitter shone in her eye and her mouth widened to
|
|
a grin. "He called to me and I took him, for he needed me. It was
|
|
in the trees, beside the water. I saw her fall down and he called
|
|
to me. You couldn't refuse a baby, could you? No. Not at all."</p>
|
|
<p>"Saw who?" David asked, but she was somewhere else.</p>
|
|
<p>She hugged herself tighter. "You don't know, do you? Nobody
|
|
knew. But I could look after him and Tim wanted me. He said
|
|
<em>take me.</em> So I took him and he's mine."</p>
|
|
<p>"Who did you take him from?"</p>
|
|
<p>"The lady died. She fell down and she died. She made a noise
|
|
when she hit. It was by the water, where we were picking the
|
|
flowers for the wine. I couldn't help her, though I tried, you
|
|
know." The voice became tremulous here. "She fell down and the baby
|
|
called to me and he needed a mother. I look after him and I feed
|
|
him. He's so hungry all the time. He could suck you to death, but
|
|
he needs me."</p>
|
|
<p>"And when did this happen, when you found the baby?"</p>
|
|
<p>The old woman squinted at David.</p>
|
|
<p>"You can't have him. He's my baby. She can't have him neither.
|
|
Bitch. Wants to steal my Timmy. Wants to take him away and mother
|
|
him. That's what she wants. But she can't." Her voice started to
|
|
rise.</p>
|
|
<p>"Nobody wants to take him away," David said soothingly. What he
|
|
was hearing was bizarre. He'd hoped for something more from the old
|
|
woman since Phil Cutcheon had told him she was still alive. He'd
|
|
only been following his instincts, at least his curiosity. But
|
|
Greta Simon was simply wandered. The dent in her skull showed up in
|
|
the slanted light like a crater on the moon.</p>
|
|
<p>Again on instinct, David asked one last question.</p>
|
|
<p>"How old are you Greta?"</p>
|
|
<p>"I'm twenty six."</p>
|
|
<p>David looked at Mike Fitzgibbon. The doctor gave an almost
|
|
imperceptible nod.</p>
|
|
<p>"And what year is it?"</p>
|
|
<p>"It's Forty one. Middle of May. Don't you know there's a war on,
|
|
silly?"</p>
|
|
<p>She grinned again and for an instant her face took on a sly
|
|
expression. The twisted eye gleamed. She bent her head and began to
|
|
hum a tune again, very faintly. She curled her hands and shifted
|
|
her arms, as if once again she really was cradling a baby.</p>
|
|
<p>"Oh, not so hard Timmy. You'll empty me right out, so you
|
|
will."</p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
</div>
|
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</body>
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</html>
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