Cradle to Grave by Aline Templeton Page A

together in a patients’ sitting room in the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. They barely looked old enough to be parents, and their six-week-old girl, yelling lustily, looked as if she didn’t find them convincing in that role either. Her mother who, Kershaw reckoned, couldn’t be more than eighteen herself, jiggled the baby helplessly for a bit, then thrust her at her partner, in tears herself.
    ‘You take her, Craig. I don’t know what to do with her and I’ve just – just had enough! Holiday! Some holiday! OK, it was cheap, but you never said there’d be, like, nothing to do. Then the weather, frigging rain all week, and now this!’
    Craig put the baby to his shoulder, patting her ineffectually. ‘Not my fault, was it?’ he said, aggrieved. ‘I nearly got killed too, remember. But we didn’t, right, so what are you greeting for, Donna? That’s probably what set her off greeting too.’
    As Donna opened her mouth indignantly, Kershaw stepped in, raising her voice above the noise.
    ‘I was wanting to ask you about last night.’
    It was no use. She could barely make herself heard over the din and the distracted parents weren’t listening anyway. Kershaw went out into the corridor and looked hopefully up and down. Spotting a nursing auxiliary, a middle-aged, competent-looking woman, she hailed her.
    ‘Look, have you a minute? I’m a police officer, trying to get a statement from the young couple in there, but their baby’s bawling so I can’t hear myself think, let alone speak. Any chance you could take it out of earshot for a bit? I won’t be long, I promise.’
    The woman gave her a good-natured grin. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ve had three of my own, so I know what it’s like. Ten minutes is all, though – I’ve to be somewhere after that.’
    With order restored, Kershaw produced her notebook, took down personal details and repeated her question.
    ‘There was this kinda . . . well, just noise, really, like, loud,’ Craig said. ‘We were upstairs with the baby, ken.’
    ‘Do you know what time it was?’ Kershaw asked, but he shook his head.
    ‘Just – it was pretty dark. All the lights went and the house was, like, shaking like it was an earthquake, sort of. And Donna was screaming and yelling. It was like we were in a horror movie, only, well, real.’ He shuddered. ‘I grabbed the bairn and went to the door – bashed my face on a sharp edge . . .’
    He fingered a scratch on his cheek, and Donna put in, ‘Nearly dropped the baby too.’
    He glared at her. ‘That was with you hanging on to me and yelling we’d all be killed. Didn’t help.’
    Hastily, Kershaw interjected, ‘And then?’
    ‘It was the water downstairs,’ Donna said, shuddering. ‘I was, like, going mental. It was all slimy and muddy with sort of stuff in it and you couldn’t see and it was up to our knees – I’ll be waking up screaming the rest of my life.’
    Craig’s expression suggested that he did not relish the prospect. He went on, ‘Then we got out, and Jan next door was calling help or something. She’d hurt her leg. She’d a big torch by her door so that was better, and she kinda hobbled out with a stick. But the road was blocked so there was nowhere to go and it was that wet and cold.’
    ‘Thought we’d die out there,’ Donna put in. ‘So I go, “If we’re going to die anyway, might as well die out of the rain, right?” And Jan goes, “If I don’t sit down, I’ll fall down.” So we went back in and found somewhere we could sit. But it was, like, horrific. I’m scared to go to sleep – I’ll wake up screaming—’
    ‘Yeah, you said,’ Craig said unsympathetically, and she put out her tongue at him.
    ‘The other house, where the man was killed,’ Kershaw began, then stopped when she saw the looks on their faces. ‘Sorry – you didn’t know?’
    ‘Oh. My. God!’ Donna said, eyes wide. ‘Someone was, like, dead – right there beside us?’
    ‘I saw them all