Suspect Sister: An Abbotsbourne England Story

By R Nicholls

Hospital boilerman and ex-ship's engineer Dave is not pleased when prim Sister Denham enlists his help. Can they dodge corrupt police officers and a drugs cartel to get vital evidence to the legitimate authorities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R Nicholls
• Release date: Mar 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370093960

Book preview

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Suspect Sister

An Abbotsbourne West Country Story

Author: R Nicholls

Copyright ©2018 R Nicholls.

No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Website: Abbotsbourneebooks.co.uk

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Chart Showing Medina’s Voyage

Map of Hospital Ducts

Chapter 1 – 31/12/1989

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Loose Ends

Abbotsbourne Books

Chart showing Medina's Voyage

Map of the Hospital Ducts

Chapter 1 - 31/12/1989

The weather around Abbotsbourne in the West of England was unusually seasonable that Christmas of 1989. In fact there was quite a severe blizzard on New Year's Eve.

***

You should try pushing, she said. Shift over and show me where the gears are. I'll drive and you push."

The one and only Sister Denham sat, straight backed and tall, hugging her nurses' cape tightly round her blue 'sister's' uniform. Dave did not care for her.

It won't do any good. Useless, said Dave. He was blowed if he was going to get wet and cold for nothing and it was going to take more than mere man power to haul his battered old Landrover out of the snowdrift.

You should try, she repeated. They need me at Down Coombe.

I have tried, he replied. I've done my best to get you there, but we're stuck.

She breathed out sharply through her nose, conveying both annoyance and sarcasm.

We can't stay here!

Look, said Dave. The Landrover's stuck. It'll take a bulldozer or a very big tractor to move it now.

Then I'll walk, she said, determinedly and pushed the door open against the gale.

Down at the large, new, district hospital in Abbotsbourne, sheltered by the Hills and the buildings, the snow had seemed harmless. The lights from the shop windows and the scurrying pedestrians had even made it seem fun. But, now they were on the 'Tops' the full force of the blizzard was frighteningly apparent. Gusts shook the Landrover and the snow was driving at them horizontally.

She seemed surprised how much strength it took her to get the Landrover door open against the gale but she started to get out.

It had been cold before but, with the door open, it felt as if solid ice was entering and flurries of snow stung Dave's face and hands.

For God's sake, get back in and shut the door, Dave shouted at her. Down Coombe is five miles away. The wind and cold'll get you long before that.

She hesitated for a moment and then climbed back on to the now snow covered front seat. The wind pressed the door shut behind her. She was fairly new to the hospital Dave believed, but he knew she was the sister the student nurses all groaned and pulled faces about when they were detailed to work in her wards.

We're lucky, he said. I live near here.

He'd been trying to decide whether they could risk going further or whether to turn back as they had approached his farm. Now their options were limited.

I'm not going home with you, she said hurriedly. They say you live by yourself in a sort of hut thing.

It's box vans, Dave replied. Double lined tongue and grooved teak boarding. There's a stove there and a nearly full bottle of rum.

We should stay here, she said firmly, her eyes straight ahead.

Now look, I expect you've done an extra long shift yourself because of the flu, but I've just done two whole shifts driving the hospital boilers and I'm not going to sit here and freeze when I'm so near home.

We should stay here, she stated again. I didn't realise how bad it was just now. We should stay with the vehicle. That's what they say.

You can but I'm going home, Dave replied.

Look, she said sharply, I don't want to pull rank on you as you're from a non-nursing department but technically we're still at work and therefore you should do what I say.

Dave slammed the Landrover door. The wind jabbed icy fingers in his eyes. He pulled down the hood of his coat to protect his face and staggered through the steadily deepening drift round the Landrover, blown along like a foundering ship in a gale. He got to the gateway to the field. God it was cold.

He had planned to cut diagonally across country and come out on the side road opposite his yard. It was a mistake. The blizzard prevented walking in the field so he had to do two sides of a triangle. First he used the partial shelter of the stone wall by the main road and then the thicket of fir trees that lined the side road off which his yard was situated. The wall wasn't that much help as a drift was forming in its lee but the going was easier once Dave got to the copse.

By the time he'd got to the copse Dave had realised another mistake. He knew he shouldn't have left her there. But now that he was so close, he thought, he would call in at home. He could pick up a spare coat and the dog and the big lamp. The torch he was using was just about done for. He climbed the wall opposite his yard and waded across the snow covered road to the six foot high galvanised iron gates.

As his frozen fingers struggled to unlock the picket gate Dave's Alsatian bitch heard or smelt him and came yelping down in welcome from her lair in the hay shed. At least someone was glad of his company.

With Li Low bouncing round him Dave crossed the yard to the end-to-end pair of ex-railway box vans. They were sold off in great numbers some years ago. Many farms had them to use for storage. Dave lived in his.

He ducked in through the concealed door at the back. He got his big lambing lantern and picked up the trench coat Li Low lay on when she came in. He also put the calor gas stove on. Later he was thankful that he'd done so. Without wasting much time Dave reduced the level in the rum bottle slightly and set off with the dog back to the Landrover again.

Once outside his bolt hole the ferocity of the wind and the cold hit him again. The wind roared in the trees round the yard and howled in the hay shed. Dave wondered if it would stand the blizzard.

His sheep bleated at him from their squat shed. They'd be all right. Lucky lot. All they'd got to do was stay there in shelter.

The air was thick with snow. It seemed more like snow with air in it. It was painful to breathe. He couldn't see properly because even the beam from the big lantern wouldn't penetrate the stuff. Nor could he hold up his head to look properly, the cold and the wind cut his face so. Two years' ago a farmer Dave had known slightly had died up there in just such a storm. Out of shelter it was hard to stand up especially with one's feet restrained by eighteen inches of loose snow.

It took Dave and the dog twenty minutes to get back to the Landrover and it was only about quarter of a mile. The drift that had stopped it had grown and now almost covered it. After a lot of floundering about and scooping at the snow with his arms and hands Dave eventually got the door open.

No-one was in the Landrover.

'God in Heaven,' he thought. 'What the Hell do we do now?' He knew he shouldn't really have left her. 'Why the Hell had he agreed to take her in the first place? He'd better find her - and quick. He must. At least he had the dog to help him. She was quite good at looking for sheep and things.'

He wondered which way Sister, 'I know best', Denham had gone. She'd tried the Down Coombe direction while he had been there. This time she'd probably tried to leg it back to Abbotsbourne. At least Dave hoped so. The wind was blowing in that direction.

Dave and the dog set off again. He made encouraging noises for Li Low to 'seek'. The drifts across the road had got much deeper. In places the gale was sweeping the tarmac quite bare of snow but where long lengths of stone wall provided shelter, the road was filled right in with snow to the height of the wall.

While Dave got progressively colder and more miserable Li Low enjoyed herself. She no doubt thought they were looking for buried sheep and when she did detect a black living form, huddled almost ball-like against a short length of wall not drifted in, she stiffened and barked fiercely.

Can you hear me? Dave yelled through the roaring of the blizzard. The ball-like figure moved; a good sign. We've got to get to proper shelter, he yelled again, making the first of several attempts to haul the woman to her feet. She was big for a woman, nearly his height but a lot less than his weight. Pulling, shoving, hauling up and falling and floundering himself, they eventually got back to the safety of Dave's box vans. It was nearly two hours since he and Li Low had left them.

Dave put the lamp on the table and heaved the door shut with relief.

She didn't even make it to the chair and it took the last of his strength to hoist her into it and get the old wooden ammunition box he kept around, for him to sit on. They just sat there by the light of the lantern and the glow from the stove while warmth slowly soaked back. Numbness in limbs gave way to pain and eventually the pain ebbed away. After an hour Dave roused himself and lit the paraffin lamp and turned off the lambing lantern to save the battery. He found his old tin mug and poured himself a ration of rum. Having emptied the mug he poured a second ration for her and put it on the table near her.

Here, he said.

She looked at him momentarily and then turned her gaze back to the yellow glow from the purring stove. Dave sat down again and let the rum thaw from the inside while the stove continued the process from the outside.

They didn't attempt to speak but sat in comparative silence, the roar and hiss of the storm outside muffled by the two layers of thick planking. After a long time she took a couple of sips from the mug.

If you're all right we might as well turn in. You can have my bed. It's through there, Dave said nodding to the gap in the planked wall which served as a doorway to the second box van. I'm going to sleep here.

But it hasn't even got a door, she said softly with a small grimace.

As you like, he said. Take the lantern if you want light in there.

He didn't even take his boots off but rolled himself in his spare blanket and the overcoat he last wore for mending the muck spreader and lay down on the bench seat by the wall behind the table. In the end she must have decided to use his bed because, just when he was dropping off, he heard the dog growling as she moved about.

It was still dark when he woke. No light came in through the home made skylight. He ached uncomfortably in arm and hip from the hard bench and wondered why he wasn't in his own bed. In rapid succession memories of the night before returned.

He'd never had a house guest before. His father had left him the land nine years ago and Dave had lived in the box vans on the farm for the last three years. He realised, too, that it was New Year's Day, not that the arbitrary division of the calendar meant much to him these days.

Just his luck to get snow bound with Sister, Play-it-by-the-Book, Georgette Denham, the youngest, the most correct sister at the hospital. Not that she was that young, probably late thirties, he supposed. Now if it had been one of her minions the situation might have had its compensations. Dave then reflected that most of the minions seemed so young they'd probably have revealed protective fatherly instincts in him. At which horrid thought he decided to get up.

He swung his feet off the bench and sat up. He found he had a lot more aches and pains than he'd realised when he was lying down. He groped around for the box of matches he had carefully left conveniently to hand and eventually found them.

Dave lit the paraffin lamp. It was nearly seven o'clock. Are you alive? he called.

Yes, thank you, came a firm reply from the other half of his 'house'. A moment later the scruffiest, most scrumpled up nursing sister ever seen appeared in the doorway. Her dark blue uniform dress was creased from being slept in and her sort of neck length, glossy, dark brown hair was tousled and unbrushed. Her appearance set the dog off barking again and with the incongruity of it all Dave let out an involuntary snort of laughter.

My we are in good humour this morning, she said with heavy sarcasm. Then after some hesitation she went on, I don't suppose you could lend me a pair of trousers - the uniform does have its limitations.

He gave her the cardboard box of spare clothes.

Help yourself, Dave said, and I think you'll find a couple of thick jumpers somewhere in the bedroom.

We must get to a telephone first thing, she called from the other 'room'.

First we must have some breakfast, said Dave. Then I must see to my animals. And then we'll try and get across to Pete Blackhill's farm and see if his phone's working. But I expect the lines'll be down, he added.

He lit the gas ring and flopped some rashers of bacon into the frying pan.

I'm afraid I'm not much into health foods and that, he said when she re-appeared.

You'll regret it later, she said evenly and sat down at the table.

It wasn't one of his better culinary efforts and lots of black bits out of the frying pan greased themselves on to the fried bread. He expected a lecture on the evils of it all but she ate without complaint.

Dave had never seen her in 'civvies' before let alone in his tatty old gear. It amused Dave to see how confused it made Li Low.

Thank you for coming back last night, she said presently.

That's all right. I ought not to have left you in the first place, Dave replied with his mouth full.

They finished eating in silence and daylight began to filter through the skylight in the roof. When he'd finished Dave went to the door and looked out. The familiar view of his yard was transformed - The wind had